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| 'Roof Tax' instead of a 106? | 13th Mar '07 |
| Bob Purser is the Churches Officer for New Communities in Northamptonshire and submitted this paper to church leaders. It explores the question of 'Roof Tax' applied in Milton Keynes as a replacement for the 106 agreement. Discussion took place about whether Northamptonshire might adopt a similar system. |
Diocese of Peterborough - Board for Education Trust and Development Committee
Briefing Note on Section 106 agreements.
Section 106 of the 1990 Town and Country Planning Act enables an agreement between the local planning authority and those with an interest in the land to which the application applies to enable planning permission to be given where this would be unacceptable unless specific issues are dealt with through the agreement. They differ from planning conditions as they can enforce pecuniary contributions.
A section 106 agreement can be as simple as to oblige the developer to provide an access road, up to an agreement involving a major contribution to the infrastructure costs of a new development.
Dept of Environment Circular 1/97 advises that agreements must be:
- Necessary
- Relevant to planning
- Directly related to the proposed development
- Fairly and reasonably related to scale and kind to the proposed development, and
- Reasonable in all other respects.
Nonetheless agreements can be of huge variety and depend on the approach taken by each local planning authority.
The agreement can include:
- The developer transferring land of funds to the local authority
- The developer transferring land or funds to a third party
- The developer constructing specified buildings which are then transferred to a third party
- The provision of affordable and social housing
- The developer complying to design and environmental standards
Currently Government is consulting on the reform of Section 106 agreements so that it would be much more restricted in its scope but would be complimented by a 'planning gain' charge. This would be a charge on each house or workplace unit constructed and this would then be redistributed to the local authority to pay for the development of infrastructure. Milton Keynes already uses this 'roof tax' approach to funding its infrastructure at the rate of approximately £18,000 per house.
Northamptonshire has commissioned consultants to advise it on the desirability of the roof tax approach and how the 'tax' would be allocated against the many infrastructure needs. However if the roof tax is levied at a rate which does not inhibit development, it may provide insufficient funds to provide for all the infrastructure costs of the new developments.
Currently section 106 agreements are negotiated by each District Council's Planning Department, but in the future it is likely that the lead will be taken by the North Northamptonshire Development Company and the West Northamptonshire Development Corporation.
S106 agreement can oblige a financial contribution to the capital costs for the provision of nursery, primary and secondary education and the County Council and is developing indicative figures for the contribution from each development.
Bob Purser
Churches Officer for New Communities |
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