Agenda item

James Rodger (Head of Planning and Enforcement), Rebecca Yee (Infrastructure Planning Manager) and Andrew Macleod (Lead Ffinance Business Partner) introduced the annual report on the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL).

Officers confirmed that CIL was a charge which allowed the Council to raise funds from developers undertaking new building projects, which supported the financing of infrastructure costs across the Borough. In line with regulatory requirements, a detailed annual report on CIL total income and expenditure was required to be published to the Council’s website by 31 December in respect of the previous financial year.

CIL formed one of the sources of funding towards the overall capital programme. The level of CIL receipts achieved for capital financing each year was set out within the report, and at the end of December 2019, a total of £3,961k CIL receipts had been invoiced or received within the financial year.

CIL regulations stated that a minimum of 15% of receipts must be allocated to local neighbourhood projects. The Chrysalis programme met the criteria for local CIL infrastructure spending, with projects ranging in scale from £5k to £100k for local initiatives. Annual spend on the programme was approximately £1m, fully financed by CIL, which was in excess of the 15% total CIL receipts.

CIL regulations were amended in September 2019 and have introduced the requirement to produce an Infrastructure Funding Statement each year, by 31 December. Infrastructure funding statements must cover the previous financial year, from 1 April to 31 March. As part of these new regulations, authorities are encouraged to include details of both S106 and CIL funding, where previously these have been set out in separate reports.

Hillingdon has spent all of its CIL funding, with nothing left to allocate.

The Committee asked a number of questions, including:

The report lists funding of circa £600k for outdoor sports and play facilities. Who is responsible for determining where that money is spent?

These projects were determined through the Chrysalis programme, which responds to resident suggestions for projects. A large number of requests from residents relate to sports and play facilities.

The report did not indicate CIL monies were being spent on health facilities. Why was this?

On large-scale developments, planning officers were often requesting that the developers include room for health facilities. For example, the Old Vinyl site development would hopefully include room for a 900sqm health facility. However, for a variety of reasons, many of which were beyond planning’s ability to overcome, such developments often fell through, with not all planning developments reaching the finishing line.

How much were residents involved via consultation on how CIL/S106 monies were spent?

Residents were consulted on all planning applications where required. CIL money in particular was often used for improvements to the public realm. Highlights of completed projects were also set out in Hillingdon People.

Councillor Sweeting referred to a request made at a previous Planning Committee meeting, for officers to provide additional detail of how CIL money was being spent within each ward. The Committee considered this request, and it was agreed that the clerk would review the nature of the request made at the earlier planning committee before feeding back to the Committee.

RESOLVED:

1.    That the report be noted; and

2.    That the clerk review the nature of the request made at the earlier planning committee before feeding back to the Committee.