What a CIL liability notice means for your project

A CIL liability notice is the council's opening move on the Community Infrastructure Levy, and it arrives after permission rather than with the decision notice. It sets out the chargeable amount for your development, the floorspace figure behind it and the steps you now have to take in order. No money is due yet. The demand notice does that job, and it only follows once you have told the council that development has begun, which is why the order of these documents matters more than their contents.

Miss a step and the sums change. A self-builder who starts digging before the paperwork is in can lose an exemption worth tens of thousands of pounds, with a surcharge on top.

What the notice is and when it lands

Under the Community Infrastructure Levy Regulations 2010, the collecting authority issues a liability notice as soon as practicable after the day on which planning permission first permits the chargeable development. In most of England that authority is the district or unitary council. In London, the borough collects its own levy alongside the Mayoral CIL, so a single notice can carry two charges calculated on different schedules.

The notice will name the permission, give the chargeable amount, show the date of issue and describe the payment procedure. It also tells you who is presumed liable if nobody steps forward, which is the owner of the land.

Where your development is permitted by the General Permitted Development Order and a charge still applies, the sequence flips. You serve a notice of chargeable development first, before starting, and the authority responds with a liability notice. Prior approval schemes for conversions are the usual case here, and the trap is assuming that permitted development means levy-free.

A revised liability notice replaces the old one whenever the permission changes. A section 73 variation, a new permission for the same site, or a correction to the floorspace all trigger a fresh notice, and the new figure supersedes the earlier one.

How the figure is arrived at

The arithmetic is rate multiplied by net additional floorspace, indexed. The rate comes from the charging authority's adopted charging schedule, expressed in pounds per square metre and often varied by use and by geographical zone. The floorspace is gross internal area, measured to the internal face of external walls.

Two points do most of the work in practice.

First, indexation. Rates in a charging schedule are index-linked, so the amount on your notice will exceed the headline rate published in the schedule, sometimes by a wide margin on an older schedule. The index applied is the one named in the Regulations for the year the permission was granted.

Second, the deduction for existing buildings. Floorspace in a building that was in lawful use for a continuous period of at least six months within the three years ending on the day permission first permits development can be netted off. That six month test decides whether a barn, a shop or a disused office counts. If the building has been empty too long, its floorspace gives you nothing, and a conversion that felt like a modest net addition attracts a charge on the whole area.

Check the measurement before you argue about anything else. A gross internal area calculated to a different convention is the most common reason a notice is wrong, and it is the easiest to correct.

Assuming liability, and why somebody should

Assumption of liability is a positive act. Someone submits the form to the collecting authority, before development begins, accepting responsibility for paying. It can be the applicant, the landowner, a developer or a contractor, and it can be withdrawn or transferred later.

If nobody assumes liability, the charge falls on the owners of the relevant land by default, apportioned between them, and a fixed surcharge of £50 is added. For a self-builder that surcharge is trivial next to what else goes wrong, because the exemptions all depend on the forms being in the right order. Our guide to which numbered CIL form goes with which step sets out the sequence.

The commencement notice that has to come next

This is where projects come unstuck. A commencement notice must reach the collecting authority before development starts, stating the intended date. Not after. Not on the day.

Commencement means a material operation as defined by section 56(4) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. Digging a trench for a foundation counts. So does laying an underground main, constructing a road, or in many cases demolition carried out under the permission. A groundworker who arrives a week early and strips the topsoil can start the clock without anyone noticing.

Failing to serve the notice has three consequences. The right to pay by instalments falls away and the whole amount becomes payable. A surcharge of 20 per cent of the chargeable amount applies, capped at £2,500. And any exemption or relief already granted ceases to apply, which is the expensive one.

Demand notices, instalments and surcharges

Once the authority knows development has begun, it issues a demand notice. That document states what is owed and when, following the authority's published instalment policy. Where an authority has no instalment policy, the full amount falls due within 60 days of commencement, which catches out anyone budgeting on the assumption that the levy is paid in stages.

Late payment brings its own surcharges, plus interest set in the Regulations at a margin above the Bank of England base rate. The authority also has enforcement powers, including a CIL stop notice that halts development until payment is made.

Reviewing or appealing the amount

A request to review the chargeable amount must reach the collecting authority within 28 days of the liability notice being issued. The review is carried out by someone senior who was not involved in the original calculation, and it looks at whether the amount was worked out correctly rather than whether the charge is fair.

If the review does not resolve it, the appeal on the chargeable amount goes to the Valuation Office Agency, and it must be made within 60 days of the notice. Appeals against surcharges are heard separately by an appointed person through the Planning Inspectorate. Deadlines here are short and strictly applied, so diarise them on the day the notice arrives.

Arguments that succeed are almost always factual. Wrong floorspace, wrong use category, an in-use building wrongly excluded, the wrong index year. Arguments about viability or hardship belong to the exceptional circumstances relief route, which only exists where the charging authority has chosen to offer it.

Records worth keeping from the first day

Keep a single folder, and keep it boring. The permission and every revised liability notice. The assumption of liability with the date of submission. The commencement notice with proof of delivery, because the burden of showing it was served falls on you. The demand notice and every payment receipt. The measured floorspace schedule with the convention used, and any evidence of lawful use for an existing building, such as rates records or tenancy agreements.

Photographs with dates help too. When a dispute turns on whether a material operation happened before the notice was served, a dated site photograph is better evidence than a recollection.

Most of the documents that go in alongside a planning application, from a Planning Statement to the technical annexes, have nothing to do with the levy. The CIL forms sit outside that pack and are administered by a different team inside the council. Treat them as a separate workstream with its own dates, and you avoid the failure mode where the planning consultant assumes the builder filed the commencement notice and the builder assumes the consultant did.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. Check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it, and read the current consolidated text of the Regulations, which have been amended many times since 2010. PlanScope can draft the supporting documents for the application itself, and you can see which reports your site is likely to need before you start.

PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval.