Planning Obligations

Planning Obligations SPD

The Planning Obligations SPD was adopted on 20 June 2022. It provides detailed guidance on a policies in the Local Plan and has replaced the January 2017 Planning Obligations Supplementary Planning Guidance (SPG).

The adopted SPD is supported by a Monitoring Fee Paper and a Schedule of Charges

The Planning Obligations SPD reflects changes to adopted policies, notably:

  • The adoption of the Harborough Local Plan in April 2019 
  • The publication of Leicestershire County Council’s new Planning Obligations Guidance in July 2019
  • National reforms to developer contributions, including the ending of pooling restrictions and clarification around seeking monitoring fees
  • Changes to National Policy including the introduction of Biodiversity Net Gain and First Homes

Consultation on the SPD was undertaken between 11 December 2020 and 5 February 2021 with a further re-consultation undertaken between 5 November 2021 to Friday 17 December 2021. The Consultation Statement sets out how responses received influenced the document.

Infrastructure Funding Statement

The Community Infrastructure Levy (Amendment) (No.2) (England) Regulations came into force on 1 September 2019. Under the regulations, Infrastructure Funding Statements (IFS) replace CIL Regulation 123 Lists as the mechanism through which infrastructure projects are identified.

The IFS is required to be published annually and provide a summary of all financial and non-financial developer contributions relating to S106s within the District. It will include a statement of infrastructure projects that the Council intends to, wholly or be partly funded by planning obligations. The Government has introduced a requirement for councils to prepare an annual Infrastructure Funding Statement (IFS) which is to be published by 31 December each year and thereafter, at least annually. 

Going forward, it is intended to publish the Council’s IFS each year to provide a statement of the planning obligations received and spent/used for each preceding financial year. It is also a requirement of the IFS to report on the obligations not only secured and spent by the Council’s own services, but also obligations passed to external stakeholders, for example, the police and the health/CCGs.

The Government considers that the Infrastructure Funding Statement (IFS) is an important and useful tool for wider engagement, for example, with local communities, infrastructure providers, and that it can inform Statements of Common Ground. It is intended to add transparency, about how contributions have been used to fund infrastructure improvements and make spending on infrastructure improvements more accountable too.

Local authorities can also report this information in authority monitoring reports but the authority monitoring report is not a substitute for the Infrastructure Funding Statement (IFS)