Infrastructure funding statements and where money went

Every English council that charges the Community Infrastructure Levy or receives section 106 contributions has to publish an infrastructure funding statement once a year. It is the single document that shows what developers paid, what the council did with it, and what remains unspent, and it is published on the council's own website with no request needed. Most people who complain that developer money never reaches their area have never opened one.

The requirement comes from the Community Infrastructure Levy Regulations 2010 as amended in 2019, which replaced the older regulation 123 lists and annual levy summaries with a single annual statement.

What an infrastructure funding statement must report

The statement has three parts, and they answer different questions.

The levy report covers the financial year: the levy collected, the levy spent and on what, the amount passed to parish and town councils, the amount retained for administration, and the amount held at the end of the year. It also has to show levy allocated but not yet spent.

The obligations report covers section 106 agreements: the agreements entered into during the year, the money received, the money spent and what it was spent on, the money allocated to particular items, and the non-monetary obligations secured, such as affordable housing units or land transfers.

The infrastructure list sets out the infrastructure the council intends to fund wholly or partly through the levy. It is the successor to the regulation 123 list, and it matters because a council cannot use the levy and a section 106 obligation to pay twice for the same thing.

When it is published each year

Statements cover the financial year from 1 April to 31 March and must be published by 31 December following the end of that year.

That lag is worth remembering before accusing anyone of hiding anything. A contribution paid in February appears in a statement published ten months later, and infrastructure delivered in the spring may not show as expenditure until the following statement.

Statements are usually found under planning policy or developer contributions on the council's website. Where an authority is a county council with education and highways responsibilities, look for its statement as well as the district's, because the two hold different pots.

Reading receipts against allocations

Three numbers tell most of the story: received, allocated and spent.

Money received but neither allocated nor spent is the figure that generates the "where did it go" question, and a large balance is not by itself evidence of failure. Levy income accumulates because infrastructure is lumpy. A council saving towards a school expansion or a road junction will hold a balance for years before spending it in one go.

Allocated money is the more informative column. A council that has received several million pounds and allocated none of it, over several consecutive statements, has a planning problem rather than a cash flow one, and that is a fair point to raise with councillors.

Compare successive years rather than reading one statement in isolation. Statements from earlier years stay on council websites, and a five year sequence shows whether allocation is keeping pace with receipts.

Watch the administration line as well. Charging authorities may retain a proportion of levy receipts to cover the cost of running the system, and the statement has to report what was taken. It is a modest figure in most places and an easy one to check.

And read the expenditure descriptions rather than the totals. "Highway improvements" tells you nothing. A named junction, a named school and a named park tell you whether the money landed anywhere near the development that generated it, which is the question most residents are actually asking.

The neighbourhood portion of the levy

Where the levy is charged, a proportion goes to the parish or town council for the area in which the development took place. The share is 15 per cent, capped at £100 per existing council tax dwelling in the parish each year, rising to 25 per cent with no cap where a neighbourhood plan has been made for the area.

That difference is the strongest practical argument for making a neighbourhood plan, and it is the part of the statement parish councils should check most carefully. The statement has to show what was passed to each parish.

In unparished areas the district or borough retains the neighbourhood portion and should engage with the local community about how it is spent. What that engagement looks like varies enormously, and the statement rarely describes it well.

Parish councils spending the neighbourhood portion have wider discretion than the council holding the main fund, since the portion can be spent on anything that addresses the demands that development places on an area.

Unspent contributions and time limits

Section 106 money usually comes with a time limit. Agreements commonly provide that unspent sums are repaid to the developer after five or ten years from receipt, and those clawback dates are a real deadline for a council.

The levy has no equivalent statutory repayment date, which is why levy balances can grow. The discipline there is political rather than legal.

The statement should show sums approaching their repayment date, though not every authority presents this clearly. Where a community wants a particular contribution spent, identifying the agreement, the trigger and the repayment date is the way to create urgency. A local group that can tell a council it has 14 months before a play space contribution returns to the developer will get a meeting.

To find the agreement itself, use the council's planning register and search the application reference, since section 106 agreements are normally published alongside the decision notice. The process for tracking an application on the public register is the same one that finds the agreement.

Using the statement to question a decision

The statement is evidence, and it can be used in three ways.

First, at application stage. Where an officer report says a contribution will deliver a particular improvement, the statement from previous years shows whether similar contributions were spent on similar things. That is a legitimate question at committee.

Second, in plan making. Infrastructure delivery assumptions in a local plan can be tested against what has actually been collected and spent, and a local plan examination is the formal opportunity to do it.

Third, in holding the council to account outside the planning system, through councillors, scrutiny committees and the local press. A statement that shows a decade of accumulated levy against a list of undelivered projects is a straightforward story.

Where the statement does not answer a question, an information request will usually get the underlying schedule. Councils hold the detail in a contributions register even where the published statement is summarised.

Limits of what the statement shows

Be realistic about the document. It reports at a level of aggregation that hides a great deal.

It does not usually show which individual development paid which contribution, or link a specific sum to a specific scheme. Non-monetary obligations are recorded but not valued, so affordable housing delivered on site appears as a number of units rather than as money. Money spent through a partner such as a county council or a health body may leave the statement at the point it is transferred, with no account of what happened next.

And a contribution that was never secured does not appear at all. The statement records what was agreed, so a viability case that reduced or removed a contribution before permission was granted is invisible in it. For that, read the officer report and any Viability Assessment published with the application.

The report index covers the documents that generate these obligations in the first place, which is the other half of understanding where the money comes from.

This is general guidance, not legal advice; check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it.