New Homes Bonus - Public forum - Planning Advisory Service (PAS)

The new homes bonus is not ringfenced and therefore can be spent on anything the Local Authority wishes to spend it on. The Government's intention is that it is spent on rewarding growth, and I presume that communities see some of the benefits of development taking place in their area. One way to do this would be to direct the spending of funds to the locality where the development generating the Bonus occured, but there is no requirement to do so.

Many thanks Harriet. My understanding is this could means an LA, should it wish to, could legally pass on the money to Neighbourhood Groups / Neighbourhood Planning Qualifying Bodies for them to spend and administer how they wish to spend it in their community.

And before people get too excited about lots of additional money, it is not. Remember that the government is funding future New Homes Bonus from top slicing £2bn from the National Grant pot for Local Government. So some authorities could well lose more in grant than is gained through NHB, so a safe assumption would be a neutral position that the grant a Council loses will be matched by the NHB received. This could well mean NHB being used simply to prop up ever shrinking council budgets. With budget cuts in my own authority of £40-50 million over the next two years, NHB will not plug more than 2-3% of the loss!