Agenda item

The Planning Obligations Team Leader presented the report which updated Members on progress with addressing resourcing issues involved in S.106 obligations and CIL administration.  This was further to a report to the Committee meetings held on 7 September 2023 and 4 April 2024 and subsequent resolutions from Cabinet on resourcing these key areas of work.  A full team of officers is now in place and working on reviewing current systems, addressing a backlog of work and putting in place new, more efficient processes for collecting, recording and spending CIL and S.106 contributions.  Short term priorities are to recover outstanding monies, undertake effective monitoring of developments, issuing of CIL liability notices and checking of exemption applications.  Following that, the priority will change to spending monies.

The Planning Obligations Team leader has started the process of working more closely with town and parish councils.  Every town and parish clerk has been contacted and some meetings have been attended by the officer.

An initial meeting of the CIL Member Working Group would be held in July to commence spending on key infrastructure projects, with approximately £10m available for local community projects.

Responses to questions and discussion included the following points:

·       The Portfolio Holder for Strategic Planning advised that the new Planning Obligations team were making really good progress now that enough staff were in place.  In light of this, the Portfolio Holder requested that the Committee re-consider the need for a Task and Finish Forum (TaFF) to scrutinise S.106 and CIL processes, and either withdraw the request or defer a review for 6 months.

·       In response to a question regarding the availability of up to date information for town and parish councils, it was noted that the public facing Exacom system was not up to date and that this was being addressed.  The Infrastructure Funding Statement for 2022-23 would be published shortly and the information contained therein would be added to Exacom.

·       It was noted that ward members were not copied in to emails to town and parish councils, and agreed that this would be looked at going forward.

·       It was confirmed that no monies had been returned to developers and that the software system would alert officers as deadlines approached.  Members were advised that where funds are allocated to a project, developers cannot usually demand repayment but this is dependent on the content of each individual S.106 agreement. 

·       It was noted that the decision on whether to take legal action against developers for non compliance rests with Revenue and Benefits service.  The legal advice was that it was difficult to recover debts of more than six years old through the courts.

·       It was suggested that a quarterly list of CIL amounts recovered and still outstanding would be helpful going forward.  The Portfolio Holder for Strategic Planning would discuss this further with the Assistant Director Planning Strategy and Development Management.

·       It was noted that the number of outstanding cases was falling every week.  In some cases, amounts could be outstanding for reasons other than debt, eg. where a trigger point on a development had not yet been reached.

·       In response to a question regarding interest, it was confirmed that all agreements have provision for indexation.

·       Work was underway to set up a streamlined process for spending under S.106 agreements and training would be provided for town and parish councils when the system was in place.

The Chair thanked the Planning Obligations Team Leader for the report.

The Committee agreed not to proceed with a S.106 / CIL Resources & Processes Task and Finish Forum.

RECOMMENDATIONS TO CABINET

Recommended that:

1.     Ward members be copied into correspondence with town and parish councils on S.106 and CIL matters.

2.     Training be provided for town and parish councils on S.106 and CIL processes.

3.     The Chair of the Strategic Planning Committee considers regular reporting on the recovery and spend of S.106 and CIL monies.

4.     Communications with town and parish councils be improved so that local councils are better informed as to the S.106 and CIL monies available to them.

5.     The link to the information on Exacom be sent to all members.