Councillors, why are you not using the money?

No, I am not urging councillors to take little brown envelopes under the table (do I look like a NIMBY conspiracy theorist?). I am talking about infrastructure funding…commonly known as “Section 106 money”. This is the glorious section of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 that requires developers to make contributions to the local community for infrastructure.

As some of you may know, this “infrastructure” is a terribly wide ranging… but for those of you who don’t, I will give you a little potted overview. S106 pays for GPs, dentists, schools, buses, road improvements, pavements, flood alleviation, EV charging points, children’s play areas, parks, open spaces, MUGAs, community halls, scout huts and most importantly, it pays for affordable housing.

These are the things that the local NIMBYS always moan about… You all know the lines: “the GPs are all full”, “ the schools are at capacity”, “the roads are gridlocked”, “this is just another load of houses in a field with no infrastructure”. And sometimes, some uninformed Councillors also trot these lines out (one can argue about whether they are genuinely uninformed or wilfully pleading ignorance).

Every single development generates some contributions to S106. This money is then handed over to the relevant Council(s) and they “pool” the money and deliver essential infrastructure. Community benefits – if you take the pain, you have to get the gain. I also like to remind NIMBYs and Councillors that the developers MUST pay this by law, it isn’t a voluntary thing, it isn’t something they can “opt out” of if they want to make more profits. They pay it or they can’t build.

This week the House Builders Federation released a report (following a very wide ranging FOI). This report found that Councils across England and Wales are sitting on £6 BILLION of unspent s106 developer contributions in their bank accounts - up from an estimated £2.8 billion last year - with 26 per cent of these unspent contributions for more than five years!

Now Councillors, you are not running a bank with a responsibility to look after money. You have a duty to ensure that this money is spent in a responsible way and spent on the right infrastructure works.

I quote some more from the report: “Investment in new housing delivery brings unrivalled economic and social benefits to communities but too many of these advantages are going unseen by local people. With the government desperate to find money to invest in infrastructure to drive growth, it is nonsensical to have billions sat in council bank accounts…Furthermore, a lack of infrastructure provision is often cited as a reason to oppose development, yet this pipeline of billions of pounds of unspent infrastructure funding is too often underappreciated in debates about the impact of new development.”.

So, Councillors, stop being bankers and start spending on infrastructure!