Lewisham Council has finally published its Infrastructure Funding Statement for 2020/21. This document outlines what money the local planning authority – Lewisham Council in this case – receive from developers in contributions.
A contribution means any Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) or money or in-kind for works received from a Section 106 agreement. Section 106 agreements are private agreements made between local authorities and developers and can be attached to a planning permission to make acceptable development which would otherwise be unacceptable in planning terms.
There is a statutory requirement to publish all this information by 31st December each year and this includes:
a) The infrastructure projects or types the authority intends to be funded
b) A CIL report
c) A section 106 report
The Planning Advisory Service has said that the IFS should include all the new activity in the year as well as all unspent money from previous years. Some councils will therefore have to perform a one-off “stock take” of obligations from lots of old agreements to establish whether they relate to unspent funds that need to be reported.
It will be very interesting to see whether the published document is accurate and contains all the detail recommended by planning experts and the Government. Take a look below:
Infrastructure-Funding-Statement-2020-2021-Lewisham-PlanningThere have been lively debates on the use of Section 106 monies and the amounts available across the borough. The use of earmarked Section 106 cash for Catford station improvements has been questioned recently, as has how much unspent money remains from all the developments in Deptford?
The Sydenham Society and Bell Green Neighbourhood Forum often seek the answer to how much money remains in the pot from the Bell Green Retail Park development – this report is supposed to give the answers. Perhaps, it raises more questions?