Out-Law News 1 min. read
13 Dec 2011, 4:28 pm
Torbay Council has divided its district into three zones, each carrying different charges for certain developments. Differential rates would be charged for the town centre zone, out of town centre zone and the out of built-up area zone. The consultation closes to responses on 6 February.
The town centre zone only imposes a levy on residential development, which is charged at £100 per square metre. No other development would be subject to a levy in the town centre zone under the proposed charging schedule.
Residential development also attracts a levy of £100 per sq m in both the out of town centre zone and the out of built-up area zone.
It is proposed that the charges imposed in the non town centre zones would be the same for each category of development. Food and drink developments would be charged at a rate of £100 per sq m; retail, warehousing and "bulky" retail would be charged at £300 per sq m, and; convenience retail with floorspace over 300sq m would be charged at £150 per sq m.
Smaller retail development would only have a levy imposed on developments in the out of built-up area zone, which would be charged at £150 per sq m.
There are no further charges imposed for any type of development in any of the zones, according to the draft CIL charging schedule.
"The Community Infrastructure Levy is a good news story... hopefully [it] will speed up the development process and give developers certainty," said David Thomas, deputy mayor and executive lead for planning, housing and energy for Torbay. "We know that there is an infrastructure funding gap even to provide infrastructure identified in the last local plan which was adopted in 2004."
Thomas acknowledged that the charging schedule is at an early stage and has said that the Council is particularly interested in engaging with the development industry on viability matters.
Torbay council was one of the Government's second phase CIL front runners announced in June. Under this scheme a number of councils were selected by the Government to lead in the implementation of a CIL charging schedule to set an example of good practice for the rest of the country. Support has been made available to the front runners from the Planning Advisory Service (PAS).
