Viability, Obligations and Commercial – Page 3

Space standards and accessible housing as appraisal inputs

Developers argue the wrong side of this. The space standard costs you units, the accessibility standards cost you build rate, and the evidence differs for each.

Independent review of a viability appraisal

A council will not take your appraisal at face value. Here is how the independent review works, where the disputes actually are and how to shorten it.

Highway works costs in a development appraisal

Section 278 highway works are a build cost with five hidden companions. Here is how to structure the appraisal line and evidence it for a viability review.

Viability appraisal outputs: what to submit

A reviewer's first job is to rebuild your residual from your inputs. The three documents to submit, how to handle publication and redaction, and the reconciliation table nobody provides.

Viability, Obligations and Commercial8 min read

Meanwhile use and its effect on benchmark land value

Interim income rarely moves benchmark land value as much as developers expect, and it can cost you the vacant building credit. What to evidence, and how to structure the occupation.

Viability on a listed building conversion

Repair costs on a neglected listed building often exceed what the finished scheme can support. How to evidence that conservation deficit, and what councils accept in return.

Grant funding and its treatment in a viability appraisal

Grant improves the residual, which makes it harder to argue for less affordable housing. Understanding additionality and drafting for a grant that does not arrive is the practical work.

Benchmark land value where the site already has consent

Where a site carries an unimplemented permission, the benchmark land value argument turns on whether that permission could actually be built today. Often it could not.

Abnormal cost evidence a council's reviewer will accept

Abnormal costs are where most viability appraisals lose credibility. Every line needs a technical report behind it, a quantity, a dated rate and a source, or the reviewer removes it.

Carbon offset payments and how they reach a section 106

A carbon offset payment is a planning obligation like any other, which means it has to pass the regulation 122 tests. Here is how the sum is built, secured and challenged.

Biodiversity net gain costs in a development appraisal

Ecology fees, habitat creation, thirty years of management, off-site units, statutory credits and lost developable land. The last of those is the line most often understated.

Transfer values for affordable units in an agreement

The transfer value is the price a registered provider pays for completed affordable units. The mechanism in the deed allocates market risk, so draft the definitions in full.

Cascade mechanisms when no registered provider is found

Every affordable housing agreement assumes a provider will take the units. The cascade is what happens when none will, and it is the clause most often drafted in a hurry and needed in earnest.

Phasing affordable delivery across a large site

The percentage is agreed in a morning. The phasing schedule takes six weeks, and it is the part that decides whether the scheme can actually be built out in the order the developer intends.

Self-build plots secured through a planning obligation

The clause that matters is not the one requiring plots. It is the one that says what happens when nobody buys them, and most disputes on small allocations start there.

Older persons housing and the affordable requirement

On an extra care scheme the affordable housing negotiation is usually settled before it starts, by the answer to a use class question that both sides would rather argue about later.

Student accommodation contributions and nomination agreements

Nomination agreements and contributions in lieu of affordable housing drive the economics of a student scheme. Both are negotiable, and some requests fail the statutory tests.

Rural exception sites and the obligation that secures them

A rural exception site stands on evidenced parish need and a section 106 agreement that ties occupancy down in perpetuity. The agreement is where these schemes are won or lost.

Testing a contribution request against regulation 122

Regulation 122 is a statutory test on the decision maker, applied to each obligation separately. Here is the evidence to request, the requests that usually fail, and how to run the point at appeal.

Planning obligations on a change of use application

A change of use can carry planning obligations even with no new floorspace. Here is what triggers them, where a condition does the same job at lower cost, and how to test a contribution request.

First Homes and how they sit in the affordable mix

A First Home is sold at a minimum 30 per cent discount held in perpetuity. Here is how eligibility, caps, transfer values and section 106 drafting work in practice.

Indexation, interest and late payment in obligations

Indexation in a planning obligation is contractual, not statutory. Here are the index choices, base date conventions, interest provisions and drafting errors that decide what a developer actually pays.

Employment and training obligations in a section 106

Employment and skills obligations commit a developer to apprenticeships, local labour and training. Here is how they are tested under regulation 122 and why so many end in a default payment.

Mortgagee exclusion clauses and why lenders insist

A mortgagee exclusion clause lets a lender sell affordable units free of the covenants on enforcement. Without one no registered provider can charge the units, so none will buy them.