CIL, s106, viability and growth

RE: BNG - subject to VAT?

2026-08-11T10:33:30Z

Here in Hastings we've just had advice from our finance team that they obtained from a tax helpline. We've been told the key issue is that the VAT advice appears to distinguish between:

1-The Council supplying/arranging BNG units → VAT may apply.

2-The Council carrying out its statutory monitoring role to check that a developer is meeting its BNG obligations → outside the scope of VAT, provided the Council has no involvement in supplying/arranging the BNG units.

So, as Hastings does not own & run/sell it's own habitat bank units we're not charging VAT on the requirement within our legal agreements to provide monitoring reports

RE: CIL Charitable Relief for University student accommodation

2026-08-10T11:56:35Z

Thank you very much for your detailed comment. Very useful and makes perfect sense! We are getting legal advise on this matter.

RE: CIL Charitable Relief for University student accommodation

2026-08-10T08:52:37Z

Hi,

I suspect that you need to go back and review the charitable purpose of the development and the relief being claimed.

Under the CIL regs the mandatory charity relief neds to meet 2

Reg 43.(1) An owner (C) of a material interest in the relevant land is exempt from liability to pay CIL in respect of a chargeable development if—

(a) C is a charitable institution; and

(b) the chargeable development will be used wholly or mainly for charitable purposes (whether of C or of C and other charitable institutions).

Additionally MHCLG guidance states the following

Under the mandatory charitable exemption, the chargeable development must be used ‘wholly or mainly for charitable purposes’ once it is completed. This is a similar formulation to that used for business rates charitable relief.

There is no statutory definition of this requirement. However, the courts have held ‘mainly’ to mean ‘more than half.’ The chargeable development must be used to ‘directly facilitate the carrying out of the charitable institution’s charitable purposes’ – or those of itself and other charitable institutions.

Use of a chargeable development for trading could qualify but is unlikely where the link to furthering charitable purposes is purely through raising money. Qualifying use could also include a charity using the chargeable development to house its employees, under certain circumstances.

I would suggest that a universities charitable purposes is unlikely to be the housing of students, especially if they are charging full market rent. So I would be expecting the claimant to show how they thought they qualified for mandatory charitable relief in the circumstances that you have described before I started to worry about Subsidy control.

As to SPEI, MHCLG guidance states

A public authority can only award a subsidy for the delivery of a SPEI if it does so in a transparent manner and it is satisfied that the value of the subsidy is restricted to what is necessary to deliver that service. Public authorities should take into consideration the cost of delivering the service and what would be a reasonable profit for the enterprise delivering the task when deciding the value of the subsidy.

I would be looking to my legal team for advice on this and its impact on the case you have if the situation met the Reg 43 criteria and you were looking to grant relief.

Cheers

Neal

CIL Charitable Relief for University student accommodation

2026-08-05T10:43:11Z

Hi all,

I was wondering whether anyone has come across a situation where a university, as a charitable organisation, has sought a significant amount of charitable relief from CIL.

In this case, the student accommodation is being let at full market rent, resulting in a CIL liability running into several million pounds.

I have been reading up on the Subsidy Control Act 2022 and noted that Minimal Financial Assistance for Services of Public Economic Interest (SPEI) is capped at £315,000. Am I right in thinking that this would limit any relief to £315,000, with the remaining liability having to be paid by the developer? Or are there other subsidy control considerations or exemptions that might apply in these circumstances?

Any thoughts, experience, or expertise on this issue would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

RE: CIL solicitors queries and CON29

2026-07-08T08:50:38Z

Hi Suraiya, yes it is for the planning condition discharge check - effectively to check they have gained approval for all the follow on details as required by conditions, under a discharge of condition application.

RE: BNG - subject to VAT?

2026-07-06T08:35:29Z

In North Yorkshire our finance bods reached a conclusion that application fees and monitoring fees for Habitat Banks that we agree to regulate are VAT-able, as they are a discretionary service, which customer could get from elsewhere and thus it would be anti-competitive to undercut the market by offering without VAT.

We don't yet have any council owned HBs, so have not crossed that bridge yet.... But I would imagine the same reasoning applies that its anti-competitive if we offer discounted Units so we should add VAT to the BUs we sell.

In contrast, for BNG Monitoring fees that we charge developers in a Dev Management scenario (by mechanism of a s106 or a UU tied to the permission) then these can be zero VAT as these are to defray our costs in monitoring BNG associated with the permission - whether on-site or a bespoke offsite solution on developer's own land where the s106 includes this land.

Where a developer has bought BUs from a third party habitat bank, obviously there is another organisation, the RB, doing the monitoring and charging their fees. So we can't charge them again.

RE: BNG - subject to VAT?

2026-07-06T07:11:22Z

Hi Suzanne

I do not see that the Council itself is providing any sort of different service for the monitoring of S106 as it does with BNG, there is a VAT able product for BNG but the Council itself is providing the same function. I would be interested to know how your finance team have reached this conclusion.

Would be interested to know it the outcome of this conversation.

RE: iDox Uniform and Developer Contributions

2026-07-02T09:15:35Z

At B&NES we use Exacom for both CIL and S106 monitoring. Exacom also talks to uniform, so that helps. So far it is working brilliantly.

RE: CIL solicitors queries and CON29

2026-07-02T09:05:36Z

Thank you very much Rosalind. When we say condition check is it for the planning condition discharge check?

RE: CIL solicitors queries and CON29

2026-07-01T14:52:26Z

At Arun we charge £298 per condition check as they could look them up themselves on our website, but we don't charge for CIL compliance checks perhaps we could as the info is available on the website and we don't charge for s106 compliance checks or queries on CON29 warnings, as that info is not available on the public website.

RE: iDox Uniform and Developer Contributions

2026-07-01T14:20:02Z

Hello, we use Exacom for both CIL & S106. We find it works well and support is excellent.

BNG - subject to VAT?

2026-07-01T14:03:31Z

Our finance team have recently advised that all financial BNG contributions secured through a s106 agreement are liable for VAT.

The view that we have used to date is that a BNG financial contribution paid to the local authority under a s106 agreement is generally treated as a statutory planning obligation and is typically outside the scope of VAT, BUT, the purchase of BNG units/credits is often VATable.

The suggestion is that we now revisit historic BNG contributions secured through s106 agreements and reissue demand notices to the developer with added VAT.

It would be helpful to know how other local authorities treat the BNG contributions secured through a s106 agreement in relation to VAT. Thank you.

RE: CIL solicitors queries and CON29

2026-06-30T08:55:42Z

Perfect, thank you! Super helpful. I guess we are losing out and we must rectify that as soon as possible :)

RE: CIL solicitors queries and CON29

2026-06-30T08:53:53Z

Yes, it does.

RE: CIL solicitors queries and CON29

2026-06-30T08:48:44Z

Thank you Liz! That's very helpful indeed!

RE: CIL solicitors queries and CON29

2026-06-30T08:47:10Z

Thank you Claire. Very helpful. Does this include CIL payment/compliance confirmation?

RE: CIL solicitors queries and CON29

2026-06-30T08:29:17Z

Hi Suraiya,

At Sheffield, for confirmation that conditions, enforcement notices and legal agreement have been complied with, we charge £101 flat fee for a Householder and £101 per hour for Commercial.

Hope this helps.

Kind regards

Claire

RE: CIL solicitors queries and CON29

2026-06-29T15:48:19Z

Hi,

At Dartford, we currently charge £70 for confirmation of CIL payments. The CON29's are dealt with by our Property Information department and charge £20 for CON29 additional queries

Hope this helps

Liz

CIL solicitors queries and CON29

2026-06-26T15:36:45Z

I would be interested to know whether other authorities charge fees for responding to solicitor enquiries relating to CIL and CON29 searches.

We receive a high volume of such queries on a weekly basis, and I am keen to understand how other authorities manage and respond to them. In particular, we often receive requests to interpret local land charge search results relating to CIL, as solicitors do not always fully understand the information provided. They frequently ask us to clarify and confirm matters such as payments made, surcharges applied, and any enforcement action.

It would be greatly appreciated if you could share how your authority approaches these types of enquiries, including whether you treat them as a chargeable service or provide a standard response.

RE: iDox Uniform and Developer Contributions

2026-06-26T15:28:12Z

We also use exacom for both CIL and S106. Exacom is linked to idox and uniform and it all works very well so far, I would say.