Colleagues haveases where an appliant applies for an extension of 99sqm, followed 3 months later with another application for a further 50sqm. Another common example is to obtain planning permission for a new dwelling, and then come in some months later with an application for a garage and an extension. To prevent this becoming a common-place way to avoid paying CIL, we are considering refusing any really blatant examples of this practice on the grounds of financial loss to the authority, which the Localism Act confirmed are material to a decision on a planning application. Has anyone already tried doing this? Does anyone have any reports, appeal decisions, etc that address this issue? We hope we won't be the first to have a legal challenge, but inevitably someone will and it's worth standing together on this if we can because the amount of CIL lost through such avoidance schemes is potentially going to be huge.
