Agenda item

DEFERRED FROM PREVIOUS MEETING - To provide the Panel with an update on the Section 106 and Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) Health Check Report.

Rob Krzyszowski, Head of Planning Policy, introduced the report on this item which had been deferred from the previous meeting of the Panel in September 2019 due to lack of time. An overview of the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) had been provided to a meeting of the Panel in January 2019 during which it was noted that a review of the management process of CIL was due to be carried out by a specialist consultancy in February 2019.

He said that the review was subsequently carried out by the independent planning consultancy Citiesmode in February and March 2019 which included workshops with senior Council officers and a review of policy and procedure documents. The final report was provided in May 2019 and the Council followed that up with an Action Plan. The report concluded that the Council has “systems in place which align with the principal legislative and regulatory requirement”, that “there are elements of good practice in the Council’s approach”, that the AD for Planning “maintains a good oversight of the systems”, but that “there are a number of deficiencies that reduce the efficiency, effectiveness and resilience of the service”.

In response to questions from the Panel, Rob Krzyszowski said:

• Asked about whether the Council had lost money as a consequence of not recording land charge data, he explained that the Council has a statutory role to keep land charges information so that when properties are bought/sold, a land search can identify whether there are any outstanding payments relating the property. CIL on a development is a land charge so anyone buying the land would have this outstanding charge flagged to them. The CIL report found that the CIL wasn’t always recorded directly onto the land charges so were not coming up in the searches, although it was always picked up later in the process. There was no financial loss to the Council as a consequence of this. The process has now been tightened up so the CIL is registered correctly and that this is picked up earlier through the searches.
• With regards to the RICS CIL index, CIL is indexed for inflation so that, in the time lag from when the CIL charge is set and the planning permission is granted, the value is retained. The BCIS index previously used had been problematic as it was not publicly available but the Government has recently replaced this with the RICS CIL index which is publicly available and will be simpler to use. Cllr Gordon asked about inflationary costs relating to the bus station in Tottenham Hale and Dan Hawthorn said that this is likely to be because the scheme is taking longer than originally anticipated rather that because of any miscalculation of inflation but that he would follow up with further detail on this. Cllr Gordon requested that this include details of full costings on what funds have been put into the Tottenham Hale redevelopment overall. (ACTION)
• On the back-up of CIL and S106 files, the previous process was to manually copy and paste the database to a separate folder which the CIL report found to be unacceptable. However, IT service colleagues have since confirmed that there is a full daily back-up across the Council so there is in fact a satisfactory back-up procedure for CIL and S106 files.
• Recruitment to a second and more senior S106 and CIL post is ongoing to complement the existing S106 and CIL post. The statutory requirements for S106 and CIL are growing which requires more capacity in the team to do that work. In terms of budgetary implications there should be a neutral cost as the Council can spend up to 5% of CIL receipts on administrative expenses/staff costs. While there had been some minor slippage in the timescale for recruitment to the new post this was not expected to have any significant impact.
• The main objectives of the report and the action plan are to meet the statutory requirements but also to be able to do more work on spending the strategic and neighbourhood CIL elements on the key outcomes of the Council and the community.
• On unspent S106 receipts and future CIL receipts, a summary of the money collected and spent/unspent is published each year in the Authority Monitoring Report (AMR). Additional detail will be published in future, due to new government requirements, through an Infrastructure Funding Statement and the first of these will be published in December 2020. Cllr Moyeed requested that the link to the most up to date AMR report be circulated to the Panel. (ACTION) 
• Enforcement of S106 agreements, including non-financial monitoring, is part of the review including by ensuring that procedures and training is up to date.

Asked about the Planning review of the S106 agreement relating to the Wards Corner, Dan Hawthorn confirmed that this was close to being finished.