Infrastructure funding statements and what they report

Every council that charges the Community Infrastructure Levy, or that receives money through section 106 agreements, has to publish an infrastructure funding statement each year by 31 December, covering the financial year that ended the previous March. It tells you how much came in, how much was spent, what it was spent on, and how much is sitting unspent. For anyone trying to work out what happened to the money promised when a development was approved near them, it is the only published document that answers the question.

The requirement came in through the Community Infrastructure Levy (Amendment) (England) (No. 2) Regulations 2019, which also removed the restriction on pooling contributions. As at October 2026 that framework remains in force, and the Infrastructure Levy powers in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 have not replaced it, so check the current position before relying on any reform.

Why the statement was introduced

Before 2019 the picture was fragmented. Charging authorities published a short annual levy report, and the infrastructure that the levy could fund was listed in a separate regulation 123 list. Section 106 money had no equivalent reporting duty at all, so a council could hold several million pounds in unspent contributions with nothing published about it.

Communities noticed. Parish councils in particular found they could not tell whether a contribution secured five years earlier had been spent, reallocated or quietly returned to the developer under a clawback clause.

The 2019 regulations replaced the old levy report and the regulation 123 list with a single annual statement covering both the levy and planning obligations. The trade-off was explicit: councils gained freedom to pool contributions without limit, and in exchange they had to publish what they collected and spent.

What must be reported each year

The statement has three parts. The regulations set out the content in detail, and the headline items are these.

For the Community Infrastructure Levy:

• Total receipts for the reported year, and total receipts for all previous years.
• Total expenditure in the year, with a summary of what it was spent on, identified by item of infrastructure.
• Amounts allocated but not yet spent.
• Administrative expenses, which are capped as a proportion of receipts.
• Amounts passed to parish and town councils as the neighbourhood proportion.
• Amounts retained at the end of the year.

For planning obligations:

• Total money received under agreements entered into in the reported year, and amounts received in earlier years.
• Money allocated but not spent, and money spent in the year with a summary of what on.
• Non-monetary contributions, including affordable housing units and land transferred.
• Amounts retained from previous years.

And an infrastructure list: the projects or types of infrastructure the authority intends to fund wholly or partly through the levy. That list replaced the regulation 123 list and is not a commitment to deliver.

Removal of the pooling restriction

The old regulation 123 capped the number of planning obligations that could fund a single item of infrastructure at five. The intention had been to push authorities towards the levy. The effect, in places where several small schemes each needed to contribute to the same school expansion, was that the sixth developer paid nothing while the first five paid in full.

That restriction went in September 2019. Authorities can now pool any number of obligations towards an item of infrastructure, and can use the levy and section 106 money for the same item.

What did not change is the test each individual obligation has to pass. An obligation 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. Those three tests are statutory, and the removal of pooling did not soften them.

How to read a statement for your area

Find it on the council's website, usually under planning policy or infrastructure. Statements are published as spreadsheets or as a short report with tables, and there is no standard template, so the same figure can be labelled three different ways in three neighbouring districts.

Read it in this order.

1. Start with the totals received and retained, so you know the scale of money in play.
2. Look at the unspent balance against annual expenditure. A balance equal to several years of spending suggests either a large project being saved for or a delivery problem.
3. Find the parish or ward breakdown of the neighbourhood proportion if one is given. Not all authorities break it down, and some report only the total passed on.
4. Cross-reference the spending summary against the infrastructure list. Items on the list that never appear in the spending summary are worth a question.
5. Check the section 106 non-monetary section for affordable housing units delivered, which is often the most interesting line and the one most frequently reported as a single number.

The statement will not tell you which development paid for what. Section 106 money is reported in aggregate, so tracing a specific contribution means going back to the agreement itself on the planning register.

Using it to test a contribution request

For an applicant or an agent, the statement is evidence. Where a council asks for a contribution towards a facility, the statement shows whether money has already been collected for that facility and whether it has been spent.

Two arguments come out of it. The first is necessity: if the authority holds a large unspent balance earmarked for the same item, the case that a further contribution is necessary to make this development acceptable weakens. The second is deliverability: a contribution towards a project that has appeared on the infrastructure list for six years without expenditure invites a question about whether it will ever happen.

Neither argument wins on its own, and both are worth putting in writing at the application stage rather than at appeal. The reporting also interacts with the mechanics of paying the levy, which depend on serving the right notices at the right time, as commencement notices and the levy amendment regulations explain.

Biodiversity net gain sits outside this reporting entirely, because it is secured through a deemed condition rather than an obligation, which is why the biodiversity gain condition does not appear in a funding statement.

Limitations of the published data

The statements are useful and incomplete, and it helps to know where the gaps are.

They report cash movements, not commitments. A large agreement signed in March appears as nothing received until the trigger point arrives, which may be years later.

They are published up to nine months after the period they cover, so the most recent statement is always historical. They say nothing about contributions that were requested and dropped during negotiation, which is where viability arguments play out. They do not show the heads of terms that were watered down. And because formats vary, comparing two authorities is harder than it looks.

One honest uncertainty: the quality of statements varies widely between authorities, and some early ones contained obvious arithmetic errors. Where a figure looks wrong, ask the council rather than building an argument on it.

Plan-making reform will change the policy context in which contributions are sought, and the position on emerging plans matters here, as plan-making reform and emerging plans sets out.

Where to find the current statement

Search the council's site for the phrase, or look under planning policy, developer contributions, or infrastructure delivery. Where nothing is published, the duty still applies, and a polite enquiry quoting the regulations usually produces it.

Combined authorities, county councils and districts can each hold money for different purposes in two-tier areas, so a county's education contributions may appear in the county's statement rather than the district's. Check both.

Reform announcements in this area come and go, and the PlanScope planning law timeline is a reasonable place to follow them.

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

If you are preparing an application and want to know which supporting documents to expect, enter the site postcode on PlanScope. PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval.