Comment

Removing the pooling limit for S106: Implications for school infrastructure

As of 1 September, the Government has implemented a change in legislation [1] affecting developer contributions.

In this comment we consider how funding for school infrastructure projects will be affected by a key change: removal of the S106 pooling restriction.

Removing the S106 pooling limit

Before the legislative change, Local Planning Authorities (LPAs) were limited to collecting no more than five developer obligations per school infrastructure project. The pooling limit has now been removed, meaning that any number of developer contributions can be used to fund school extensions or new school projects.

Some good news – overcoming a lack of education infrastructure as a block to development

We have witnessed schemes being refused permission on the basis of a lack of education infrastructure, due to the pooling limit already being reached. As such, residential developments were not coming forward but, as Government has reiterated [2], education infrastructure should be expanded to support the delivery of new homes, not act as a blocker. With the pooling restriction removed, there should be more flexibility in finding solutions to build additional school infrastructure to support the delivery of new homes.

Risk of ‘double dipping’ remains

With two funding mechanisms – S106 and CIL – both still in place, there remains the potential that developers will be requested to pay contributions via both – known as ‘double dipping’. The changes in legislation make no advance to prevent this from occurring.

What happens next?

S106 obligations continue to be required to meet the CIL 122 Test. We work with our clients to analyse the impact of residential schemes on education provision, and negotiate contributions to ensure that obligations for school infrastructure projects are:

• necessary to make the development acceptable in planning terms,
• directly related to the development, and
• fairly and reasonably related in scale and kind to the development.

Education Impact Service at Turley

If you would like to know more about our approach or to discuss a specific scheme, please contact Maxine Kennedy or Amy Gilham.

More information on our Education Impact Assessments is available here:

2 September 2019

[1] Community Infrastructure Levy (Amendment) (England) (No. 2) Regulations 2019

[2] Most recently in DfE’s latest (April 2019) non-statutory guidance, ‘Securing developer contributions for education’