News
Revisions to Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL)
Monday 4th January 2021
Recent updates have been made to the CIL regime through both new regulations and additions to the Planning Practice Guidance (PPG).
Community Infrastructure Levy (Amendment) (England) (No.2) Regulations 2020
These amending Regulations came onto force on 16 November 2020. In summary:
- First Homes will benefit from the same CIL relief as other forms of social housing. Regulations already provided relief from CIL for affordable housing products such as social rent, affordable rent and shared ownership. New regulations extend the same relief to First Homes.
- They specify how First Homes will be able to qualify for CIL relief: the home must be sold for no more than 70 per cent of its market value, and that a planning obligation must be entered into designed to ensure that this will be the case on all future sales.
- A 'clawback' period will be introduced to allow authorities to charge CIL if the relief conditions are not adhered to within a certain period. This period will end on the date of first sale, assuming all the conditions have been met. This clawback period will now also apply to other affordable home discount products (previously, the clawback period for such products was seven years after the commencement of development).
View the Regulations HERE
PPG Amendments (16 November 2020)
The old use classes are still in force for the purposes of CIL rates that were applied before the changes - new paragraph 201 of the CIL PPG section advises that any references to the use classes that were specified in the use class order prior to 1 September 2020 "are to be read as if they were references to the descriptions of the uses which comprised those use classes before that date".
View the revised CIL section of the PPG HERE