Oral Presentation by officers

At the request of the Committee, the Head of Development & Building Control provided an overview on Section 106.

Section 106 (S106) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 allowed a local planning authority to enter into a legally-binding agreement or planning obligation with a landowner in association with the granting of planning permission. The obligation was termed a Section 106 Agreement.

Planning Officers negotiated and agreed what obligations were appropriate for each development.

The following key points were outlined to the Committee:

Obligations included in a S106 were of a financial nature such as contributions for education purposes, highway works, parks or public art. Non-financial obligations could include the provision of affordable housing and restrictions on the issuing of residents’ car parking permits.

The Financial Obligations were calculated as part of the planning application process whereby the planning officer consults with all relevant services.

Each service would respond to the planning officer with comments on the application, and if appropriate, the level of S106 contribution required. The level of the contribution must be in accordance with the Council’s current policies.

As part of the process, the service must be in a position to justify the amount required and produce a breakdown of how the contribution had been calculated and for what purpose it was required.

When S106 Agreements were negotiated, agreement would be reached as to the period of time the Council had to spend the contribution, once it had been received. A typical time period for many contributions was seven years from the date of payment, however this time period must be reasonable and was negotiated on an individual basis. 

Sometimes it would be reasonable for the developer to request that the Council spend the contribution sooner.  The agreement would stipulate exactly what the contribution must be spent on, such as a developer paying £25,000 for Highways to build a pedestrian crossing in a specified location within 2 years.

Monitoring of the S106 Agreement entailed that oncethe agreement had been completed, the details of the agreement were placed on the S106 Monitoring Schedule where all relevant services had access to the details of the agreement.

The Corporate S106 Liaison Group met every 6 weeks and all relevant services were invited to attend. The Monitoring Schedule was regularly updated by Planning and Finance to include S106 contribution payments received and spent.  The details of S106 agreements being monitored were reported to the Monitoring Committee every quarter. 

The responsibility to ensure that contributions were spent within time and on the specified purpose remains with each service. Planning, Legal and Finance provided a supportive role to services via the Corporate S106 Liaison group and maintained the S106 Monitoring Schedule regularly.

If the Council did not spend the money on the specified purpose or within the time frame outlined in the S106 agreement the developer could request that the contribution (including interest) be returned to them.

The Council could also approach the developer and request that a further agreement be signed (Deed of Variation) varying the terms of the original S106 to allow the Council more time to spend the contribution – this was entirely at the discretion of the developer and the Council could not assume that the developer would agree to this.

The Committee noted the presentation.