MP asks question about assessment of the impact of new S106 AH threshold - Public forum - Planning Advisory Service (PAS)

What the DCLG seems to have missed is that removing any affordable housing requirement from smaller schemes makes those schemes more viable and therefore potentiallyable to support a higher CIL rate than the larger schemes that have to provide affordable housing.

As the CIL Regs allow differential rates based on the size of the development, I think that we can expect to see CIl Charging Schedules showing a higher residential rate for residential developments of up to ten units.

Daniel Hudson:

We should stop describing this as planning obligations changes and refer to it as the Delocalisation of Affordable Housing Thresholds

Even as an authority most of which is a designated rural area, we have major concerns;

• Loss of any contribution from developments of between 3 and 5 dwellings outside main settlements and from proposals of 9-11 dwellings in main settlements;
• Loss of on-site delivery for sites of 3-9 dwellings outside main areas – impact on balanced development in villages;

• contributions based approach – Payment on completion of last unit creates an obvious loophole by allowing a developer to build all but one and walk away or design a scheme with a deliberately unsellable unit in an odd corner;
• Lack of clarity about existing buildings rule – already being used to take urban sites below the threshold;

• Lack of clarity about phased development – no safeguard against 3 applications of 10 dwellings each;
• Lack of clarity about what constitutes an exceptions site – is a 100% affordable allocation in a National Park an exceptions site.
• Impact on neighbourhood planning – a lot of communities are seeking to pursue small sites based approaches to deliver affordable and local needs housing. Under the new rules, the best they can achieve is a commuted sum with no guarantee that any such sum will be spent locally.

So in summary, the changes are already putting the delivery of affordable homes at risk in a District where locally set policy indicates that they are both needed and deliverable. In the longer term, it will, in addition, make planning in environmentally sensitive rural areas very much more contentious, remove a major incentive for communities to accept new development and undermine neighbourhood planning.

I wonder if CLG considered any of this. I also wonder whether their reluctance to answer the question is related to the forthcoming legal challenge.

The Ministerial Statement, and the updated online planning guidance, very clearly only relate to planning obligations / contributions secured through legal agreement.

Therefore, all of the thresholds, credits etc which have been set out, do not appear to apply to on-site provision of affordable housing, which can be secure by planning condition rather than requiring a legal agreement. This is awkward, and it may have been Government's intention that the thresholds, credits etc would apply to to on-site provision, nothing they have set out however relates to on-site provision provided it is secured by planning condition.

I have asked DCLG for clarification on this matter but I am yet to receive a response.

I would suggest that if you have local plan policies which require on-site provision of affordable housing (when viable), and can do this by planning condition (not by s106 agreement), then the Ministerial Statement and updated PPG have no impact on this practice, as they relate to planning obligations / contributions secured through legal agreement only.