Agenda item

Report of the Director of the Built Environment.

The Committee received a report of the Director of the Built Environment responding to Member requests to summarise the governance arrangements and recent spending for the City Corporation’s City Community Infrastructure Levy (City CIL) and for the use of Sec. 106 planning obligations to contribute funding for the provision of affordable housing. The report also outlined potential changes to governance arrangements and the process for increasing the scale of Sec. 106 funding for affordable housing.

Officers reported that, in terms of current governance, this Committee were responsible for setting CIL rates with spending decisions then taken by the Policy and Resources Committee. To date, this Committee’s areas of interest had attracted 80% of the spend in comparison to the 40% originally envisaged.

With regard to funding for affordable housing, Officers reported that they would be looking to increase the contributions developers were required to make here and were discussing this at present with consultants in terms of a viability study. It was intended that this would be the subject of a further report to this Committee in March 2020.

The Chair spoke to underline the need for pace with regard to affordable housing contributions. He added that different local planning authorities varied in terms of how CIL funds were governed and also reminded Members that the City of London was due to commence a Governance Review of its own in the near future.

A Member thanked Officers for a helpful report and stated that he, personally, was in favour of continuing to separate collecting and spending powers given that this Committee’s areas of work were currently doing well from the process.

Another Member stressed the importance of any viability study on affordable housing contributions needing to be of net profitability of building in the City and not necessarily just of rising costs.

In response to a question regarding references to affordable units and not social housing, Members were informed that affordable housing was a generic term which included many types of subsidised housing including social rented housing which was needed to address the City’s affordable housing needs.

RESOLVED – That Members note the content of the report.