Rebecca, If you are adopting this approach, then in my view what you
can do is pursue the original developer for the CIL payment and
surcharges. In reality, I think that you will have a long battle and
won't get the money from them. The usual sanctions eg stop notices
will have no leverage. Your other option is to recover the payments
from the current owners as they have (a) assumed liability and (b) own
the land and will be really affected by such actions as a stop notice.
You say it seems very harsh, I guess you mean to impose the sanctions
on the new owner when it appears they are willing to make the CIL
payments. That is why I would adopt the more flexible approach of
letting them pay CIL due without taking on responsibility for
surcharges and interest for actions over which they had no control,
although strictly speaking they have assumed liability for these.
Although David's post above is the 'correct' way to handle transfer
of liability, submission of Form 4 requires both parties to combine to
agree to transfer liability. Clearly this was not a situation
discussed by them and the Form 2 from the new owner shows them willing
to assume responsibility. By not submitting Form 4 I suggest that the
original owner has left themselves more open to the recovery action I
mentioned at the start of this post.