CIL Review – Can We Fix It?

Part 1 of our CIL Review blog highlighted the Government's appetite for retaining and reinforcing the Community Infrastructure Levy.  Our suggested reforms for this year are:

1. Simplify regulation: The CIL Regulations are the product of a set of amendment instruments for each year since 2010, plus the changes made by the Localism Act.  These reforms – delivering phased charging, abatement, flexibility on offsets for existing floorspace and other improvements – have been welcome.  The resulting system is now mired in horrible complexity though.  The Review should explore how much regulation could be simplified or simply discarded.
2. Simplify phasing: The introduction of phased charging in 2014 is a great tool for managing CIL liability. The process for defining and amending CIL phases should be significantly easier for investors though.  Breaking the link between planning phase and CIL phases is necessary to end what has become a time consuming exercise.