Agenda item

(Director of Governance) To consider the attached report.

The Assistant Director of Governance (Development Management) presented a report setting out all Section 106 Agreements entered into during 2014/15, and details of the benefits realised throughout the year from previous agreements, including monies received where development had commenced. Members noted that an annual report in this respect had previously been made to the former Planning Services Scrutiny Panel.

The Select Committee was reminded that Section 106 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 allowed a local planning authority to enter into a legally-binding agreement or planning obligation (known as a Section 106 Agreement or a developer contribution, planning contribution or planning agreement) with a land owner/developer in relation to an issue related to the grant of planning consent for particular development. Members were advised that Section 106 Agreements often took considerable time to conclude, particularly where intended benefits were of a complex nature or when the enforcing of provisions needed to be especially robust.

Members noted that Section 106 Agreements acted as the main instrument for placing restrictions on development, often requiring the mitigation of site specific impacts. Agreements could be sought in situations where planning conditions were inappropriate to ensure or enhance the quality of development and to enable proposals that might otherwise have been refused planning permission to proceed in a sustainable manner. Members were reminded that Section 106 Agreements must always be relevant to and proportionate to the scale and kind of related development and could be used to deliver:

(a)       affordable housing;

(b)       necessary highway works;

(c)       public open space;

(d)       the restoration of listed buildings; and

(e)       off-site infrastructure.

The Assistant Director of Governance emphasised that agreements could not be used simply to generate monetary resources for the public purse, as this might result in accusation that the Council was ‘selling’ planning permission, and that agreements could also not be used to secure benefit unrelated to specific development. Members noted that Section 106 Agreements could therefore only be applied to meet the following tests:

(a)       be necessary to make development acceptable in planning terms;

(b)       be directly related to the proposed development; and

(c)       be fairly and reasonably related in scale and kind to the proposed development.

The Select Committee was concerned that the report presented by the Assistant Director of Governance did not illustrate any backlog of Section 106 Agreements that were currently still requiring completion, particularly as some of the benefits achieved in the last year actually related to agreements that were concluded over twelve years ago. Members considered that, without a complete overview of the progress of all agreements currently in preparation, they were unable to give proper scrutiny to the process. Several members also expressed the view that effective scrutiny of Section 106 arrangements required an overview and understanding of how and where monies arising from agreements were intended to be spent and appropriate timescales for the collection of relevant monies and the realisation of the associated benefits.

The Assistant Director of Governance (Development Management) reported that the Council had not returned any monies arising from completed Section 106 Agreement, where this had yet to spent, and that no requests in such respect had ever been received from developers. The Assistant Director advised the Select Committee that the eligibility criteria for Section 106 contributions secured through the planning system were set out in the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) Regulations 2010 and National Planning Policy Framework, which were intended to address any local infrastructure ‘gap’ and that the need for Section 106 Agreements to be entered into should be come less, if the Council were to adopt a local approach to the CIL.

RECOMMENDED:

That in view of the concerns expressed by the Select Committee with regard to its ability to undertake full and effective end-to-end scrutiny of the Section 106 Agreement process, it be recommended to the Overview and Scrutiny Committee that all future annual reports detailing agreements entered into and completed during each year, be made to the District Development Management Committee.