Planning Bill

Can the Minister enlighten me on two or three matters? It is natural to assume that local authorities will have different rates of CIL. It will be for them to decide. The circumstances and the procedures are set out in the consultation papers. I assume that each local authority will be able to decide what proportion of its infrastructure it will seek to fund from CIL. Some may decide that the market is so difficult that they will not be able to fund a great deal in this way and others, in prosperous, booming parts of the country—if there is prosperity and boom in the next few years—may have the confidence to aim for a much higher proportion. What average proportion of infrastructure investment do the Government expect local authorities to fund through CIL? What range have they worked on? They must have some idea. The intention is obviously that it will be an important contributor. Will there be any pressure on local authorities from the Government to aim at at least that proportion? What is the relationship between central government and local government on this? Some local authorities might decide that the way to attract development is to go for low rates of CIL. It would be helpful to know how the Government see the dynamics of that. My second group of questions to the Minister concern changing the rates of CIL. After a while, a local authority might decide that it had got it wrong. It might be doing better or worse than it thought. Can local authorities change their mind? Is there an interval between setting CIL, reviewing it and changing it? In the early days, I was involved in Leeds. If we got developers to come to the city, we were delighted. We were almost begging them to come and were being very generous. Ten, 15 or 20 years later, the city was in a position to be demanding in the way in which it dealt with developers. There is no certainty about these things because of the nature of development. Can local authorities change their rates of CIL and, if so, what time will have to pass before they can do that? What flexibility or inflexibility faces them? If they can change the rates of CIL, where does that leave developers who have already paid into the fund at a different rate? I accept that there will be a levy and am trying to understand how the nuances will work.