General election timing aside, the CIL Regulations 2010 are set to come into force on 6 April. Click here for the regulations. This recently published final version follows on from the draft which was published in July 2009. Much remains the same but there are some important changes and we'll be highlighting some of the new points on this blog and in our Future Perfect? e briefing.
However, I wanted to flag up a couple of points which have not changed substantially from the July draft. The first of these related to phased development. The regulations recognise that many outline permissions will be implemented in phases. If an outline permits the development "to be implemented in phases", then each phase is a separate chargeable development which means the CIL payments will follow the phases so as to allow a phased approach to payment. However, this only works if your outline "provides for the application for approval of reserved matters within separate periods for separate parts of the development". So if all you have is an outline with, say, an extended period for reserved matters applications, because it is understood that the development will take several years and will be developed in phases perhaps dependent on market conditions as to the order in which phases come forward, then this will not be sufficient to take advantage of the phasing allowance in the CIL regulations.
The other point relates to planning permissions granted following an application under s 73 of the 1990 Act. Although we often call these "applications to vary conditions" inposed on an earlier planning permission - in law the earlier permission is unaltered and instead, the s 73 application generates a whole new planning permission. So with that in mind, take a look at regulation 9(5). This says that where a s 73 permission extends time for implementation (actually that is no longer possible but I am assuming this actually means "where you obtain a s 73 permission which itself has an updated period for implementation compared to the original"), then the chargeable development is the development for which permission is granted by the previous permission.
So does that mean, that if you never implement the earlier permission and instead implement the s 73 permission, you manage to avoid CIL?
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