The Community and Infrastructure Levy was denounced as “unfair” and “confusing” by industry professionals at a panel event examining the tax ahead of a government-commissioned review.
The department for Communities and Local Government has set up an independent panel chaired by former British Property Federation chief executive Liz Peace to review the levy until April 2016.
Speaking at a panel hosted by the BPF, Roy Pinnock, a partner at Dentons, compared the development tax to a “legal onion”, which “gets more confusing as you peel back the layers”.
He said he had sat in meetings in which clients have had completely different opinions of what the levy will cost.
Alex Taylor, associate acquisitions and development director at Unite Students, said the levy needed to be used to deliver infrastructure and not as a “political tool” to dictate what is delivered.
He said the student housing developer sometimes had to rule out one London borough over another because its CIL charge can be as much as six times higher. CIL charges for student housing could often be double that for residential development, he said.
Philip Barnes, group land and planning director at Barratt Developments, said the “inconsistent” and “unfair” levy had made it difficult for developers to calculate how much they will be charged when assessing the viability of a scheme.
The talk, chaired by Stephen Ashworth, a partner at Dentons, also included Jane Everton, director of planning at the Planning Directorate, and Tom Dobson, QUAD director, who is on the review panel.
Submissions to the review panel are invited until 15 January.
Click here to read the questionnaire deployed by the review.
Listen to Philip Barnes of Barratt Developments explain what he believes to be the main problems with CIL and what he would like to see from the review:
