Planning Bill

I wish to speak to Amendment No. 442ZAA in this group. As we have heard, the purpose of CIL is to contribute to the funding and delivery of infrastructure. For the industry coalition, including London First, which last year put forward the proposal for a planning charge as the alternative to planning-gain supplement, the rationale of this new levy has always been about co-ordinated and timely infrastructure delivery. My amendment concerns the vital issue that local authorities and other infrastructure providers should be required to give a commitment to use their best endeavours to deliver infrastructure financed through CIL in a timely fashion. The amendment would require local authorities and others benefiting from CIL to give a best-endeavours commitment. ““Best endeavours”” is a familiar term in legislation. It was used in the New Roads and Street Works Act 1991. Given the state of some roads in London, some may feel that even best endeavours are not enough, but it is much better than no promise of endeavour at all. The commitment to delivery is a vital component of the current tariff system operating in areas such as Milton Keynes. Noble Lords may be aware of a BBC investigation in which a resident of Macclesfield used the Freedom of Information Act to discover that £2.5 million of Section 106 money had gone unspent by his local authority. That might be an exceptional case, but it highlights the importance of my amendment, which would commit local authorities and other infrastructure providers to use their best endeavours to deliver CIL-funded infrastructure. We must focus on charging and collection on the one hand, but delivery on the other. The one is pointless without the other.