Developers are often told that the CIL Regulations prevent ‘double dipping’ – where Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) is spent on infrastructure for which financial contributions are also secured via Section 106 agreements (or, put the other way around, where S106 obligations are used for things the charging authority has said it will fund via CIL).
Not quite. In Oates v. Wealden District Council & Anor [2018] EWCA CIV 1304 the Court of Appeal confirmed that decision-makers may refuse planning permission for CIL-bearing schemes where highways impacts are sufficiently serious, even if the authority has previously said it will use CIL receipts for related highways works.
In Oates, the authority was considering an application for 390 homes on an unallocated, CIL-liable site which would have significant impacts on several junctions.
R123 Restrictions
Regulation 123 of the Community Infrastructure Levy Regulations 2010 does impose ‘double-dipping’ restrictions:
- planning obligations may not be a “reason for granting” permission where they secure funding or provision or infrastructure on a published list (including in most cases through “requiring a highway agreement”) – regulation 123(2)
- planning conditions are prohibited where they would require a highway agreement to fund or provide such infrastructure (or restrict development until a highways agreement is complete) – regulation 123(2A) also prohibits.
Be Wary
Developers should be very wary of the limitations of those controls. The authority’s R123 list in Oates identified highways works to the worst affected junctions as projects and types of infrastructure on which CIL would be spent. The highway authority (County Council) objected to the application because critical improvement works were required to these junctions before development. The impacts would be severe without guaranteed implementation and timing of the CIL-funded works. The applicant resisted this on the basis that the R123 list meant that the necessary upgrades could “only be provided through the payment of a CIL contribution” and were not within the developer’s control or any proper restriction. The County Council withdrew its objection on the strength of advice agreeing with that position. The LPA’s officer then reported this to committee.
The Claimant claimed that the misdirection on the effect of the CIL Regulations – wrongly assuming that a Grampian-type restriction on development until the upgrades were complete – rendered the consent unlawful.
No-Nonsense
The judgment is clear that the highway authority had failed to understand the “true scope of Regulation 123” – which does not “compel[…] the Local Authority to grant permission for a proposed development if, for whatever reason, that development is unacceptable in planning terms, or if it cannot be made acceptable either by a planning obligation, or by the imposition of conditions”.
The officer had directly ruled out a Grampian restriction on occupation until the mitigation works were complete, which would have been lawful. Instead she had simply said nothing about it but had advised members the impact would be unlikely to be “severe” taking into account both build out rates and time for delivery of the infrastructure improvements funded by both CIL and other sources. As such, that a restriction would be unjustified.
Look Both Ways
The judgment therefore underlines the need to:
- understand the general development cost imposed by CIL
- understand what is, genuinely, ‘necessary’ to make a scheme acceptable (bearing in mind the high bar set for the ‘severe’ impact threshold, for example, in relation to highways impact)
- review what assumptions the planning authority and the CIL charging authority have made when assessing the viability of combined planning burdens for a particular site.
If its CIL-stage or Local Plan stage assessments have assumed – in setting a high CIL rate or justifying planning burdens – that CIL will ‘replace’ some forms of scheme-specific mitigation costs then that will often create a legitimate starting point for avoiding the double dip.
If not, it is worth looking both ways on CIL.
