For anyone who is interesting in putting forward an opinion on proposed reforms to the planning system in areas of performance and S106 contributions, they'd do well to read the consultation documents here and respond before 4th May:
https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/planning-performance-and-planning-contributions
Essentially, it looks like central government is looking to encourage councils to speed up decision making by raising the threshold for designating a council as underperforming. This might be a good opportunity for people to stick their oar in if they feel councils engage in tactics to avoid racking up negative statistics with central govt.
They're also looking to formalise the approach that was implied in earlier (i.e. 10 years ago) circulars that sites smaller than 10 units shouldn't have a liability to affordable housing contributions - while [to my mind] in the earlier circulars it was clear that it was never central govt's intention to require AH from small sites, councils took a different slant and knowing that a sub-10 unit site could never provide 10% affordable housing, because it's not possible to build a fraction of a unit, they sought financial contributions instead
https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/planning-performance-and-planning-contributions
Essentially, it looks like central government is looking to encourage councils to speed up decision making by raising the threshold for designating a council as underperforming. This might be a good opportunity for people to stick their oar in if they feel councils engage in tactics to avoid racking up negative statistics with central govt.
They're also looking to formalise the approach that was implied in earlier (i.e. 10 years ago) circulars that sites smaller than 10 units shouldn't have a liability to affordable housing contributions - while [to my mind] in the earlier circulars it was clear that it was never central govt's intention to require AH from small sites, councils took a different slant and knowing that a sub-10 unit site could never provide 10% affordable housing, because it's not possible to build a fraction of a unit, they sought financial contributions instead