The High Court has recently rejected a developer's bid to avoid paying the whole £870k CIL bill for a phased housing scheme for its 81-home scheme in Somerset in one go, after a judge rejected its argument that it was entitled to pay only for the scheme's first phase that had commenced development.

The issue arose from the fact  that the outline permission granted in March 2016 was not a phased permission. The development commenced in October  2018,  triggering the liability to make the payment within 60 days under Regulation of 31 of the CIL regulations, and the S.96A non material amendment made to the permission for the scheme in March 2020 to show a phased plan was made too late to postpone the trigger on the whole site.

Comment

if you want to phase CIL payments, make sure that you obtain a permission that approves development in phases or make sure amendments to permit phasing are made before commencing development.

A charging authority who is prepared to allow the payment of CIL by instalments must also publish an instalment policy on its website containing:

• The date on which the instalment policy takes effect.
• The number of instalment payments.
• The amount or proportion of CIL payable in any instalment.
• The time that the instalment payments are due.
• Any minimum amount below which CIL cannot be paid by instalments.

(Regulation 69B(2), CIL Regulations 2010.)

Please contact our Commercial Property Team on commercialproperty@prettys.co.uk or call 01473 232121 if you have any queries or questions regarding the above.