Amendments to the CIL Regulations seem to be like buses, you don’t see any for ages and then five come along at once

read time: 2 min
07.06.19

The latest offering from the Government are the Draft Community Regulation Levy (Amendment)(England) (No2) Regulations 2019 that provide for a number of amendments -  and some might say, long overdue amendments.

The draft regulations include a separate schedule that includes the different calculation of chargeable amounts in different cases.  Each part of the draft schedule provides for calculations for standard regulation 40 cases, the calculation where an amendment has been made to the floorspace of the chargeable development, the calculation for social housing relief and calculations where regulation 128A applies (i.e. S73 applications made in relation to a pre-CIL planning permission).  The new schedule also includes a new RICS CIL index which comes into play in 2020.  Hopefully, that will be freely accessible, unlike the BCIS All-in Tender Price Index for which a subscription is necessary.

At the top of most practitioner’s Christmas list will be the amendments to the relief provisions.  The draft regulations remove the provisions which result in relief being lost if a commencement notice was not submitted before starting the development.  Instead a provision has been added requiring the imposition of a surcharge.  Further analysis of the draft regulations is required to establish whether relief can subsequently be granted in circumstances where the chargeable development has already commenced.

The draft regulations include new reporting requirements for local authorities.  These require an annual statement setting out how much CIL is collected, how much has been spent and what it is being spent on.  Similar provisions are included in relation to planning obligations (i.e. S106 Agreements).

Amendments are also being made to regulations 122 and 123.  Monitoring fees in S106 Agreements will be allowed (although I suspect that doesn’t really change what in practice most local planning authorities are already doing!).  But one of the most significant amendments is the removal of regulation 123 altogether meaning that the pooling restrictions in S106 Agreements will no longer apply.  Given that the restriction on pooling was originally designed to encourage local authorities to adopt CIL it will be interesting to see how many authorities continue to adopt CIL or if any decide to discontinue their charging schedules and simply rely on planning obligations.”

 

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