FOI - Section 106 monies - Public forum - Planning Advisory Service (PAS)

Yes! Especially from lawyers who want to know the status of all monies, and the dates it should be spent by. Mary Anne Guildford Borough Council

We are certainly getting a few. The general 'fishing' ones from lawyers we tend to respond to with a generic statistical response - it is unfortunate if that is not what they were hoping for, but detailing every agreement will take for ever and we advise them that if they want this they will be expected to pay appropriately. If details of specific agreements are requested then fair enough, we provide the info. Lawyers will be looking for monies available to reclaim under clawback and will be looking to earn good money by so claiming it. It is only reasonable that they at least make an effort to do proper research in order to do this! It is vital that those providing the facilities (POS, education, community facilities etc.) for which money was collected are aware of this trend and make sure 1. they spend the money and 2. a proper audit trail exists to show it was properly spent. Graham Townsend North Devon Council

For information we are just migrating Islington's S106 information from their pre-existing spreadsheet into our product based cdpSmart permission monitoring application which they have used for several year's now. The S106 capability, which has Islington as a foundation client, allows you to specify for each permission one or more obligations/contributions with details. You can the create S106 project records which allow you to assign 'allocations' from those 'contributions' to build up the project detail. You can record payment trigger date information and payment details and then flexibly report on this information. It is not intended to be an accounting system, but places the S106 information squarely in the database of permission data for coordinated monitoring. Mike Cooper, cdpsoft 020 3355 4370

yes we have had an increase too. There has been a general increase in Parish Council requests under FOI which is quite understandable - but the latest trend is for more general requests, presumably from firms trying to make money by "finding" unspent monies. A couple of weeks ago it was a London solicitor and the latest from a Stuart Oldroyd Chartered Surveyor, wanting information and copies of all contributions received in the last 10 years. We have not responded in full as some of the information is exempt on the basis it is already in the public arena ( copies of each S106 were requested) and other information would take significant work to retrieve as it is not centrally held on the Obligation database (such as names of each of housebuilders who have paid the 200+ contributions received in the last 10 years) and therefore exceeds the appropriate limit for FOI. We have advised him that there are no unspent monies so I am hoping that he does not come back for an estimate.

It's not difficult to project that in these troubled times external queries from solicitors, developers and others on Section 106 will run and run. May I please seek to change the direction a little? Does anyone have a good example of a Section 106 Agreement which includes a requirement for developers etc when tendering to provide the following information: - Work with appropriate agency for local business support and how will maximise opportunities for local contractors - Value of staff and "in kind" kind support to be provided to Social Enterprises and Third Sector organisations. - Number of SMEs from target area that will be identified as a potential supplier - Number of SMEs from the target area that will obtain at least one order - Value of contracts to be placed with SMEs from the target area I know that these are more typically requirements in some Housing Association and Urban Regeneration Company tenders, but seek to find an example where these might have been included within Community Benefit in Procurement as part of a Section 106 Agreement. Many thanks and best wishes for 2009 Les Huckfield Leslie Huckfield Research

Dear colleagues at other authorities. This situation of FOI requests being used to seek out S106 contributions was discussed at length at last week's London Council's meeting. It was found that almost every borough has been receiving one or more FOI request for details of all unspent developer contributions. The most likely ones being from Stuart Oldroyd Chartered Surveyors and Howard Kennedy Solicitors amongst a few others. Different boroughs have handled it in different ways, but in short most have challenged any unreasonable requests and only provided summary information. Those that have given an excel or other spreadsheet of agreements have not heard anything back. Three points are important to note: 1) You are not allowed to provide any unspent contributions to these solicitors unless they demand the payment from you and have a signed headed letter demostrating that they are officially working for that client. 2) You do not have to provide copies of S106 agreements under the FOI requests, your land charges team will have a procedure for providing this information and the author of the FOI must write to them, providing any necessary admin fees, for copies of each agreement. 3) The London Council's are looking into the possibilty of taking these solicitors to the Law Council because they are using FOI requests for profit. For an update on the position, email: Marisa Burnal at London Councils. Adam (Planning Obligations Officer, LB Barnet)

Correction, please note: Regarding point 3 above, please ignore this, the situation is as follows: The information the London Council's FOI officer has received back from the Information Commissioner’s office suggests that the companies are not misusing the Act as there is nothing to stop it being used for commercial purposes.

We too have received similar requests from solicitors. Given most of the information they are asking for is publically available anyway - the terms of the agreement, site, what money is for, how much, trigger points and any clawback dates etc - are we obliged to provide it under FOI? Can't we just say that the information is already in the public domain and where it can be found. I accept that some information about how much has been collected and how much has been spent may not be and we need to provide that. But why should we be doing the running around gathering the information, particularly if it is not already compiled in an easy access database, when they could do it themselves?