The government has published the regulations that will govern the application of the Community Infrastructure Levy. This follows the Government's consultation on the draft regulations, which closed in October 2009.
Key points to highlight in the final regulations include:
- The calculation of the chargeable amount for CIL will be based upon the net increase in floorspace on the site. This represents an important departure from the consultation proposal which was based upon the total gross floorspace of the proposed development (Section 40).
- Local Authorities will have the power to award discretionary relief from CIL where they consider it expedient to do so (Section 54).
- Local Authorities may now in certain circumstances accept the transfer of land as payment in kind for CIL (Sections 73 and 74). No other form of payment in kind is included in the regulations.
- The regulations place on a statutory footing the government's policy on use of planning obligations. Section 122 now sets out the rule that planning obligations may only constitute a reason for granting planning permission where they are necessary to make development acceptable in planning terms, directly related to the development and related in scale and kind to the development.
- The regulations prevent double counting between CIL and s106 obligations: a planning obligation cannot be a reason to grant planning permission to the extent that it provides for funding or provision of infrastructure that has been identified by the Local Authority as intended to be wholly or partly funding by CIL (Section 123).
- In some circumstances local authorities will be able to borrow against future CIL income. This borrowing could be used on a short term basis to fund infrastructure works with the cost of borrowing being repaid by the monies raised from CIL going forward.
One of the key issues still not addressed is the concern over delivery of infrastructure under the new system. Whilst section 106 mechanisms often enforced strict timescales on developers for funding or delivering infrastructure to serve their developments, there are no equivalent provisions to require delivery by Local Authorities of the infrastructure that CIL is intended to fund.
The draft regulations can be viewed if you click here (www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si2010/draft/pdf/ukdsi_9780111492390_en.pdf).
This article was written for Law-Now, CMS Cameron McKenna's free online information service. To register for Law-Now, please go to www.law-now.com/law-now/mondaq
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The original publication date for this article was 12/02/2010.