Infrastructure delivery plans and where contributions go

An infrastructure delivery plan is the document that explains what the roads, schools, surgeries, parks and sewers in your area are supposed to get as the local plan is built out, what each item costs, who is meant to deliver it and whether anyone has the money. It is prepared alongside the local plan as part of its evidence base, because an inspector examining a plan has to be satisfied that the growth it proposes can actually be serviced.

It is also the most useful document almost nobody reads. If you want to know why a section 106 contribution was taken, or why one was not, this is where the answer sits.

What an infrastructure delivery plan contains

The format varies between authorities but the content is consistent. Expect a schedule, usually a large spreadsheet or appendix, with a row for every infrastructure project and columns covering:

• the project and its location, often tied to a specific allocation or settlement
• the infrastructure type, grouped into categories such as transport, education, health, green infrastructure, utilities, community facilities, flood risk and emergency services
• the cost estimate and the date of that estimate
• the delivery agency, which for most items is not the planning authority at all but the county council, an NHS body, a water undertaker, National Highways or a school trust
• the phasing, usually in five-year tranches across the plan period
• the funding sources identified, split between developer contributions, the community infrastructure levy, grant funding and the delivery agency's own capital programme
• the residual funding gap
• a priority category

Alongside the schedule sits a narrative explaining the methodology, the population and pupil yield assumptions used, the engagement with each delivery body, and the authority's conclusion that the plan is deliverable.

Those assumptions repay attention. Pupil yield per dwelling, for instance, drives the education figures across the whole plan, and a yield assumption applied to a scheme of small flats produces a school contribution that may be hard to justify on that specific site.

How projects are prioritised

Most authorities use a three-tier classification, and while the labels differ the logic is the same.

Critical infrastructure is what development cannot proceed without: a junction upgrade needed before any traffic can be added, a foul drainage connection, a water supply reinforcement, flood mitigation. These items drive phasing, and where they are unfunded they become the reason allocations slip.

Essential infrastructure is needed to support the development but not to physically enable it: school places, health capacity, open space, bus service improvements. Most section 106 negotiation happens here.

Desirable infrastructure improves the area and will be delivered if funding allows: public space improvements, enhanced cycle routes, community building improvements.

The classification matters because it maps directly onto how hard the authority will push. A critical item will be secured by a Grampian condition preventing occupation until it is delivered. A desirable item is the first to be dropped when a viability argument appears.

Read the priority column alongside the funding gap column. A critical project with a large unfunded gap and no identified delivery agency is a problem the plan has not solved, and it is worth asking about at examination or at any application on the affected allocation.

Linking a project to a contribution

This is where the infrastructure delivery plan does legal work rather than administrative work.

A planning obligation can only be taken into account in granting permission if it meets the three tests in regulation 122 of the Community Infrastructure Levy Regulations 2010: it must be necessary to make the development acceptable in planning terms, directly related to the development, and fairly and reasonably related in scale and kind to it.

The infrastructure delivery plan is the usual evidence for the first and second of those. If an authority asks for a contribution towards a named primary school expansion that appears in the plan, with a cost, a delivery body and a stated capacity shortfall in that planning area, the necessity and relationship arguments are largely made out. If it asks for a contribution towards an unnamed fund for education generally, with nothing in the plan tying it to the catchment, the request is vulnerable.

So the question to ask of any contribution request, whether you are the applicant or a neighbour wondering where the money went, is simple: which project in the infrastructure delivery plan does this fund, and what is its reference? An authority that cannot answer that has a regulation 122 problem.

Where community facilities, health or education capacity is the issue on a larger scheme, a Social Infrastructure Assessment setting out the existing capacity, the demand the scheme generates and the projects it would fund is the document that makes the link explicit rather than leaving it to correspondence.

Funding gaps and how they are reported

The funding gap is the honest part of the document and it is usually large. Authorities publish gaps running to hundreds of millions across a plan period, and that is not a scandal: the gap reflects that developer contributions were never intended to fund the whole of public infrastructure, and that most of the items belong to other bodies' capital programmes.

What happens to the money that is collected is reported separately and annually. Authorities that receive the community infrastructure levy or section 106 contributions must publish an infrastructure funding statement each year, setting out what was received, what was spent, what remains unspent and which projects the authority intends to fund. That statement is where you trace an individual contribution, and infrastructure funding statements and where the money went explains how to read one.

Two features of levy spending are worth knowing. A proportion of levy receipts is passed to the parish or town council for the area where the development took place, and that proportion increases where a neighbourhood plan has been made for the area. So whether a neighbourhood plan covers your site affects both policy and money, which is one of the stronger practical arguments for making one.

Monitoring fees are a separate matter from the contribution itself, and authorities charge them to cover the cost of checking that obligations are delivered. The basis on which section 106 monitoring fees are calculated varies considerably.

Updating the plan between local plans

An infrastructure delivery plan prepared for a local plan examination is accurate on the day it is published and out of date within a year. Cost estimates inflate, delivery bodies change their programmes, schools fill up faster or slower than projected, and allocations come forward out of sequence.

Better authorities publish a refresh annually or every two years, sometimes as an appendix to the infrastructure funding statement. Others leave the original document in place for the life of the plan, which creates a practical problem: a contribution request based on a cost estimate from six years ago is open to challenge on the scale and kind limb of regulation 122, and so is a request for a project that has since been delivered by other means.

If you are negotiating, ask for the current cost base and the current capacity position rather than accepting the published schedule. If you are a resident wondering why a promised project has not appeared, compare the original schedule against the latest funding statement and look for the item.

Using the plan to argue about necessity

Three groups use this document and they use it in opposite directions.

Applicants and their agents use it to resist contributions that are not evidenced. The arguments that work are that the project is not in the plan, that it has already been funded or delivered, that the authority has not shown a capacity shortfall in the relevant catchment, that the cost estimate is stale, or that the scheme's own yield does not generate the demand assumed.

Objectors and parish councils use it to press for contributions and for phasing conditions. The arguments that work are that a critical item in the plan is unfunded and the application makes no provision for it, that the development would occupy capacity the plan has already allocated to another site, or that the authority's own evidence identifies a deficiency the application ignores.

Authorities use it to justify what they ask for, and increasingly to explain to residents why they cannot ask for more.

All three are arguing within the same framework, which is why it pays to read the document before the argument starts rather than during it.

One honest uncertainty sits over this whole area. The Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 contains powers for a different approach to developer contributions, and until those powers are brought into general effect the existing levy and section 106 framework continues to apply. Check the current position before relying on anything about the replacement regime, because the timetable has moved more than once.

Where to find it

Four places, in order of usefulness.

1. The authority's local plan evidence base page, under a heading such as infrastructure, viability or evidence documents. The infrastructure delivery plan is usually a separate download from the plan itself.
2. The examination library for the most recent local plan, which holds the version the inspector saw along with any updates submitted during hearings.
3. The annual infrastructure funding statement, which should be on the authority's planning obligations or community infrastructure levy page and is published each year.
4. The authority's committee papers, where infrastructure delivery plan refreshes are usually taken to cabinet or to a scrutiny committee and are therefore searchable.

If you cannot find it, a request to the planning policy team rather than to development management will usually produce it, and where it is not published a request under the environmental information regulations is available.

This is general guidance rather than legal advice, so check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it.

If you are working out which supporting documents a scheme with infrastructure implications will need, browse the 66 report types by category.

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