The Government is consulting on further changes to the CIL (Community Infrastructure Levy) regime. CIL allows local authorities to raise funds from developers undertaking new building projects in their area. The funds are put towards the provision of infrastructure. Below we set out five of the key changes that the Government is considering:

1. Extending the transition period from April 2014 to April 2015 The CIL regime currently provides that from 6 April 2014 local authorities will be restricted in their use of planning obligations for pooled contributions. General infrastructure contributions (e.g. for health or transport) can only be sought from five separate planning obligations. The idea is to incentivise local authorities to get on and adopt charging schedules. The Government now proposes to push the transition back one year, to allow local authorities extra time to adopt CIL.

2. Differential CIL rates set in relation to the size of a development Local authorities can currently set different CIL rates by reference to area and to use. The Government now proposes to allow CIL rates to be set in accordance with different sizes of development as well. There will need to be local market and viability evidence to justify differential rates related to scale.