Review launched to ensure local communities benefit from development

A review has been launched to ensure that local communities benefit from development in their area.

The Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) was introduced in 2010 to provide a faster way of collecting developer contributions to local infrastructure, including transport, schools, health services and recreation facilities.

Proceeds from the levy are typically spent by councils on local infrastructure projects and almost 100 councils are now charging CIL.

The review aims to make sure that this measure is working effectively and comes as a part of wider government plans to streamline the planning system and improve how local communities benefit from development.

The main objectives will be: to assess whether CIL is meeting its objectives of providing a faster, fairer, more certain and transparent means of funding infrastructure; look at the relationship between CIL and Section 106 agreements; and consider how reliefs and exemptions operate and whether the neighbourhood element of CIL is helping to increase community support for development.

Communities Secretary Greg Clark said: “Our planning reforms have ended the top-down bureaucracy of the past that pitted neighbours against developers – which means more than a million homes have been granted planning permission since 2010.

“We now want to go even further, so we can ensure communities can directly see the benefit of new development and can be confident that new homes come with the infrastructure to support them.

“This independent review will examine how we can improve the community infrastructure levy to ensure it best benefits local communities whilst delivering the houses the country needs.”

Planning Minister Brandon Lewis said: “Where communities benefit from development they are also more likely to support it, and the Community Infrastructure Levy has played a vital role in contributing to local infrastructure and creating that local support.

“As a government we want to build more homes, supported by people who live in the area and this review will look for new ways in which proposed development can benefit whole areas.”