Planning Authorities can seek contributions from developers to make sure that the impacts of development are mitigated, and that developments are accompanied by improvements to infrastructure in the area. This mainly takes the form of S106 Legal agreements and financial contributions to the Community Infrastructure Levy.
The Council’s Developer Contributions guide provides further detail on how these affect development proposals.
The community infrastructure levy (CIL) is a levy that local authorities can charge on developments in their area. CIL income must be used to fund additional infrastructure required to support new development. This can include such things as roads, schools, green spaces and community facilities.
The overall aim of the Levy is to make the developer contributions system fairer, faster and more transparent than a system that relies on negotiation on individual sites. It is intended to give developers more certainty over costs and give councils and communities more choice and flexibility in how to fund infrastructure.
The council has an adopted CIL Charging Schedule. It started charging CIL on 1 August 2013.
S106 is still be used for site specific measures required to make a development acceptable.
The council has now prepared guidance on the implementation of CIL.
The document is aimed principally at agents and developers who are involved in discussions on developer contributions on a regular basis.
It explains how CIL will work alongside other types of developer contributions, such as planning obligations or highway agreements, that may be necessary to make a proposal acceptable.
The guide draws together various strands of information into a single comprehensive document.
The document is updated twice a year as a minimum, in April to include details of the latest indexation to be applied in respect of the Solent Recreation Mitigation Strategy and Nutrient Neutrality and in November to advise on CIL indexation to be applied from 1 January.