COMMUNITY INFRASTRUCTURE LEVY (CIL)
What is the Community Infrastructure Levy?
The Community Infrastructure Levy (commonly called 'the levy' or 'CIL') was introduced in April 2010. It allows local authorities in England and Wales to raise funds from developers who are undertaking new building projects in their area.
The money can be used to pay for a wide range of infrastructure that is needed as a result of development. This can include new or safer road schemes, flood defences, green spaces and leisure facilities.
CIL applies to most new buildings that receive planning permission and charges are based on the size and type of the new development.
The Isle of Wight Council wants to move forward to use this system locally by 2014. To do this, the Council has to carry out the necessary work needed to set the local rate under the Regulations.
The work needed to support the setting of a CIL charge for the Isle of Wight is:
- The completion of an infrastructure delivery plan setting out the key infrastructure needed to support development over the plan period
- The viability testing of a suggested CIL levy
- A draft charging schedule
- Summary of Representations to the draft charging schedule
- Submission of charging schedule for Examination
What are the benefits?
The Community Infrastructure Levy will:
- Deliver additional funding for the Isle of Wight Council to carry out a wide range of infrastructure projects that support growth and benefit the local community
- Provide developers with much more certainty 'up front' about how much money they will be expected to contribute, which in turn encourages greater confidence and higher levels of inward investment
- Ensure greater transparency for local people, because they will be able to understand how new development is contributing to their community
- Enable the Isle of Wight Council to allocate a meaningful proportion of the levy raised in a neighbourhood to deliver infrastructure the neighbourhood wants.
How will the levy affect planning obligations?
CIL will be used as the mechanism for pooling contributions from a variety of new developments to fund the provision of new infrastructure to support those developments in the wider area. Planning obligations (private agreements between the local planning authority and the developer) will continue to play an important role in dealing with site specific issues and in helping to make individual developments acceptable to local planning authorities and communities. It will not be possible to 'double charge' for the same infrastructure works through both S106 and CIL.
What will CIL money be spent on?
The CIL will be spent on infrastructure needed to support the development on the Isle of Wight. The Council will identify a number of projects as part of its work to set the CIL rates.
The regulations recognise that priorities change and allow for new projects to be identified that weren't originally foreseen. The Council will publish a list of the infrastructure it intends to fund through CIL on its website.
If you have any queries regarding the Community Infrastructure Levy please phone the Planning Policy Team on 01983 823552 or email us on
[email protected]
Page last updated on: 28/02/2012