This is entry number 301, published on 1 December 2011, of a blog on the Planning Act 2008 infrastructure planning and authorisation regime. Click here for a link to the whole blog. If you would like to be notified when the blog is updated, with links sent by email, click here.
Today's entry reports on the coming into force of the first Community Infrastructure Levy.
What would Robin Hood make of it? Today, Newark and Sherwood District Council becomes the first local authority in the country with a Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) in force.
CIL is intended to be a more transparent charge on new developments for infrastructure, previously decided on a case-by-case basis via agreements under s106 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. Fixed rates per metre for different types of development in different parts of a council area are charged according to a previously consulted upon, examined and published 'charging schedule'. It then gets spent on a list of projects set out in a 'regulation 123 list', backed up by evidence in an Infrastructure Delivery Plan (IDP). To get an idea of who is charging how much for what, I previously carried out a comparative study of the first ten charging schedules.
For example, Newark & Sherwood's charging schedule is here. The council area is divided into 8 zones, although there are only three variations of the charge. In the 'Newark Growth Point', there is a £125 per square metre charge on retail development and £20 on industrial. In Newark & Rural North it is £100 for retail and £15 for industrial; everywhere else it is just £100 for retail. No other development has to pay the charge. The Reg 123 list lists 28 highway projects and one education project on which CIL will be spent. Despite having mentioned Robin Hood I will avoid the temptation to describe this as highway robbery.
The principle of CIL, an open tariff that developers will know in advance is a sound one (and can be traced to existing practice in Milton Keynes), but if it is set too high it will have a depressing effect on development. There is still a role for s106 agreements, but there should be no double-charging via s106 and CIL. There are going to be lots of sophisticated arguments about CIL - for example N&S wasn't allowed to charge smaller retail developments a lower rate of CIL, because it hadn't provided enough evidence that this wasn't for an ulterior motive of encouraging small shops over larger ones, not a proper purpose for CIL.
By my calculations (is anyone else keeping track of this? Planning magazine has an occasional 'CIL watch' blog entry, but that seems about all) there are now 18 local authorities who have got at least as far as publishing a draft charging schedule for consultation, as follows (with links to their charging schedules or CIL pages).
In force now
In force from 1 January 2012
Examination in progress
Awaiting examination
Broadland
Croydon
Huntingdonshire
Norwich
Poole
South
Norfolk
Wandsworth
Consulting on Charging Schedule
Mid Devon -
until 5/12/11
Colchester - until 9/12/11
Brent - until
12/12/11
Plymouth - until
13/12/11
Wycombe - until
23/12/11
Bristol - until
20/01/12
I spoke at a conference recently and the talk there was all about CIL. I predict that this number will explode over 2012 to the extent that in a year's time the majority of local authorities will be on the list.
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