Review announced of the Community Infrastructure Levy

On the 19th November 2015, the government announced that the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) is to be the focus of a new review to ensure people benefit from local development in their area.

The CIL was established in 2010 with the aim of supporting the delivery of local infrastructure, and the government has signaled its intention to streamline the planning system and ensure local communities are able to raise funds for continued development. Improving transport infrastructure, schools, health services and recreation facilities all rely on local community fund raising and the review will propose measures to ensure developers are meeting their contributions to these improvements.

Since 2010, CIL has used tariff-style developer contributions on large projects within a local planning authority’s area. As an alternative to the traditional ‘Section 106’ planning obligations which are negotiated on an application-by-application basis, the proceeds can be used by councils on local infrastructure projects.

The aims of the review, to be chaired by Liz Peace (former chief executive of the British Property Federation), are:

• To assess CIL’s performance in providing a faster, fairer, more certain and transparent means of funding infrastructure through developer contributions.
• To examine the relationship between CIL and Section 106 agreements.
• To consider the impact of CIL’s neighbourhood element of helping increase community support for development.
• To consider the operation of reliefs and exemptions.

Read more about the Community Infrastructure Levy here.

Communities Secretary Greg Clark said:

“Our planning reforms have ended the top-down bureaucracy of the past that pitted neighbours against developers – which means more than a million homes have been granted planning permission since 2010.

We now want to go even further, so we can ensure communities can directly see the benefit of new development and can be confident that new homes come with the infrastructure to support them.

This independent review will examine how we can improve the community infrastructure levy to ensure it best benefits local communities whilst delivering the houses the country needs.”

Planning Minister Brandon Lewis said:

“Where communities benefit from development they are also more likely to support it, and the Community Infrastructure Levy has played a vital role in contributing to local infrastructure and creating that local support.

As a government we want to build more homes, supported by people who live in the area and this review will look for new ways in which proposed development can benefit whole areas.”

The review is open to contributions from a wide range of stakeholders, including:

• Local authorities.
• Community groups.
• Developers.
• Surveyors.
• Lawyers.
• Consultants involved in the CIL process.

The request for written submissions is open from 19 November 2015 until 15 January 2016. To respond go to the government site here.