Overview
Under Section 106 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 a Local Planning Authority can seek obligations, both physically on-site and contributions for off-site, when it is considered that a development will have negative impacts that cannot be dealt with through conditions in the planning permission. Policy 12 of Local Plan Part 2 on Developer Contributions is most relevant.
For example, new residential developments place additional pressure on existing social, physical and economic infrastructure in the surrounding area. Planning obligations aim to balance this extra pressure with improvements to the surrounding area to ensure that a development makes a positive contribution to the local area.
The obligations may be provided by the developer building or directly providing the matters necessary to fulfil the obligation. This might be to build a certain number of affordable homes or create new public open spaces on-site, for example. Alternatively, planning obligations can be met in the form of financial payments to the Council to provide off-site infrastructure works.