Planning gain, or section 106 agreements, is where a developer is forced to pay the local council extra money in return for planning permission.
Sometimes te strings that councils attach to planning permission can be clearly justified. A new supermarket or housing estate might need a new road junction that the developer should reasonably be compelled to finance; other times, however, the link is rather more tenuous, descending into pork barrel politics. The bigger the development, the more wide ranging are the measures that councils seek to extract. EDF has to pay £100m under section 106 deals for its £14bn Hinkley Point C nuclear power station, including a £20m community fund for ‘quality of life’ initiatives, £4.6m for ‘community safety measures’ and £5.5m for economic development and tourism initiatives.
The government has no problem with the concept of these deals being done but wants to see agreements reached more quickly so that construction work is not delayed, particularly when it comes to new housing developments.
Housing minister Brandon Lewis said: “Section 106 planning agreements can bring great benefits to local communities but too often they drag out planning applications for months.
“That’s why I’m proposing measures that will speed up the process, get planning permissions granted quicker and workers on site earlier, all the while keeping the community benefits that these agreements can bring.”
The proposals include:
- setting clear time limits so section 106 negotiations are completed in line with the existing 8 to 13 week target for planning applications to be processed rather than letting them slow the whole planning process down
- requiring parties to start discussions at the beginning of the planning application process, rather than the current system where negotiations can often start towards the end
- a dispute resolution process where negotiations stall preventing development
- using standardised documents to avoid agreements being drafted from scratch for each and every application
- potential legislation in the next Parliament to give new measures teeth.
Consultation on these proposals runs until 19 March 2015.
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