Planning Obligations are obligations relating to a person's land which bind the land and the owner (s). They are made by deed under Section 106 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 (as amended).
Planning obligations may be used to:-
- Restrict the development or use of the land in a specified way
- Require specified operations to activities to be carried out on the land
- Require the land to be used in any specified way
- Require a sum or sums to be paid to the authority on a specified date or dates or periodically.
Planning obligations provide a means of ensuring that developers contribute towards the infrastructure and the services that East Staffordshire Borough Council believe necessary to facilitate proposed developments. Contributions may be either in cash or kind.
Planning Obligations are also used to deliver the following, for example:
- Affordable housing
- Payments towards required education provision
- Ensuring agricultural dwellings are not sold separately from the land they serve
- Ensuring residential annexes are occupied by dependent relatives and are not sold as a separate independent dwelling
- Requiring infrastructure (roads, drains) to be provided
- Requiring land to be dedicated and equipped as open space or playgrounds
- Requiring sums to be paid for the provision of offsite infrastructure or the long term maintenance of open space
The Council has not currently introduced Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL). The Council plans to consider by the end of March 2015 whether or not to develop CIL. If it decides to do so the next stage will be publication of a preliminary draft charging schedule for consultation