Section 106 Planning Obligations
What are Section 106 Planning Obligations?
Section 106 Planning Obligations, or planning agreements, are legal agreements negotiated between local planning authorities and developers in the context of a grant of planning permission. They are intended to make development proposals acceptable, which might otherwise be unacceptable, and provide a means to ensure that a proposed development contributes to the creation of sustainable communities, particularly by securing contributions towards the provision of infrastructure and facilities, for example Affordable Housing and Education.
All planning obligations must meet the three statutory tests:
- necessary to make the development acceptable in planning terms;
- directly related to the development; and
- fairly and reasonably related in scale and kind to the development.
The District Council's approach to securing Section 106 obligations is contained in a Planning Obligations Developer Guidance Note
There are two supporting documents associated with the guidance note
1. The document Provision for Open Space Sport and Recreation provides details of the arrangements for assessing contributions to open space
2. The document Community Facilities and Developer Contributions, provides additional evidence to support the case for developer contributions to local indoor community and sports facilities
The council has also produced guidance on affordable housing commuted sums
Community Infrastructure Levy
From April 2010, local planning authorities have been given the power to apply a Levy on all new development to help fund local infrastructure, rather than rely on individual planning agreements. .
Councils must spend income from the levy on infrastructure to support the development of the area but they can decide what infrastructure to spend it on and it can be different to that for which it was originally set.
Harborough District Council approved the principle of introducing a Community Infrastructure Levy in June 2011. Using the Infrastructure Schedule as tabled in the Councils recently adopted Core Strategy as the basis , we are now gathering additional evidence on development viability to explore the setting of a Levy during 2012. This page will be updated during 2012 to publish key documents and view progress on its development.
When and if a Levy is introduced, Section 106 agreements will continue to be made but will only apply to site specific matters.
