A dispute over when a community infrastructure levy (CIL) is due to be paid has left a Somerset developer with a bill for hundreds of thousands of pounds.
The levy is a relatively new charge made by local authorities on new developments in their area and is used to fund local infrastructure. It only applies in areas where the local authority has consulted on and published a charge sheet setting out the levy’s cost.
Oval Estates, which is in the process of developing a housing estate in Radstock, Somerset, has been challenging Bath and North East Somerset Council’s decision to issue it with a notice to pay a levy of £874,83.78.
It doesn’t dispute that it is liable to pay a levy, but claims that, as the development is being built in stages, it is entitled to pay the levy in stages too.
However, in a ruling this week, a High Court judge sitting in Cardiff rejected this argument.
In his ruling High Court judge Mr Justice Swift stated that, if the development is indeed taking place “pursuant to phased planning permission” then the rules allow the levy to be phased too.
The development wasn’t initially intended to be phased, but now it is being developed in stages.
There is no dispute that Oval was liable to pay a levy – it has signed an agreement to that effect in April 2017.
So the question that needs to be answered is: at what point did Oval become liable to pay the levy? When it was a staged development, or when it wasn’t?
As in many developments, the planning permission history is complicated. However, the judge’s ruling is clear. Payment became due when work started, and at that point it wasn’t a staged development, so the payment of the levy shouldn’t be staged either.
“My conclusion is that this challenge fails,” he wrote in the judgment.
“When on 15 October 2018, work on the development commenced Oval became liable to pay CIL in respect of the whole development.
“As at 15 October 2018, the chargeable development was the development permitted by the March 2016 planning permission. That planning permission was not a phased planning permission.
“The non-material change to the planning permission, subsequently authorised by the council in February 2019, months after the commencement of work, did not alter the position.”
In his ruling he sad that there was a “proposed phasing plan” in existence earlier in the process “but the description of the plan as a ‘proposed’ plan makes it evident that the plan was not an agreed document.”
Oval Estates (St Peter’s) Ltd v Bath & North East Somerset Council
Timothy Leader (instructed by Temple Bright Solicitors) for the claimant
Daniel Stedman Jones (instructed by the Legal Dept., Bath & North-East Somerset Council) for the defendant
Planing Court (Cardiff Civil Justice Centre, Swift J)
