Planning

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Section 106

What is Section 106?

A Section 106 (S106) is a legal agreement or deed, signed by the council and an applicant, developer or another party. They're generally required to mitigate impacts that a development will have on its immediate locality. It sets out what financial contributions will be paid to the council by the developer. It also sets out any additional, non-financial obligations they need to meet.

S106 payments are normally needed to make a development acceptable in planning terms. Without these financial contributions and obligations to improve the surrounding area, or offset or mitigate any impacts of the development, ithe development would probably not be considered acceptable and not be given planning permission.

Financial contributions can be spent on a range of areas including transport, public realm or open space improvements. S106 agreements will also continue to be used to address other policy requirements that can’t be dealt with through the community infrastructure levy (CIL), such as carbon offsetting contributions.

Non-financial obligations may include things such as a sustainable travel plan for occupiers, making use of local businesses, provision of employment and training opportunities and the provision of affordable housing.

Contributions and obligations, as secured by a S106, are registered as charges with the Land Registry. They are registered until they have been formally discharged by the council.

How we allocate Section 106 funds

This is the process we follow when we allocate and spend S106 funds:

  1. Project Managers in our Regeneration team apply for this funding for their projects.
  2. Our S106 and CIL team review their application to make sure it complies with our spending policies and to check which funding pots they could use money from.
  3. The S106 and CIL team write a report with all the information about the project.
  4. If the request is for under £100k, then the money can be released at the delegated level. This means that our Director of Planning and Growth can approve it.
  5. If the request is for over £100k, then it must be approved at planning committee.
  6. We report back on the money that has been spent each year in our Infrastructure Funding Statement.

This flowchart (PDF, 26kb) shows what happens during the process of collecting S106 contributions and how it's spent.

Page last updated: 11 March 2024

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