Planning Obligations or Section 106 Agreements (Town and Country Planning Act 1990).
What they are
These are legal agreements between the Local Planning Authority and developers and are linked to major planning permissions.
They are financial and non-financial requirements:
- drafted if a development will have significant impacts on the local area;
- and the impact cannot be mitigated by means of conditions attached to a planning decision.
They are used to:
- Mitigate a developments impact (for example, through increased public transport.
- Prescribe the nature of development (for example, requiring a given portion of housing is affordable).
- Compensate for loss or damage created by a development (for example, through loss of open space).
They may only constitute a reason to grant planning permission for the development if the obligation is:
- Fair and reasonably related in scale and kind to the development.
- Directly related to the development.
- Necessary to make the development acceptable in planning terms.
Examples include:
- Affordable Housing.
- Open space provision.
- Traffic calming measures or road improvements.
- Contributions for public transport.
- Providing educational facilities.
Compliance of a Section 106 Agreement
This is when we confirm, in writing, that all covenants have been complied with (or not). This includes both financial and non-financial obligations.
We advise you to search for and check these documents when you sell or buy a property. They can be found via our online planning register:
Note: You can search by keyword, application reference, postcode or by a single line of an address.
Section 106 monitoring
All agreements must be monitored on a regular basis to determine whether a trigger for payment have been reached. For example, a trigger could be:
- commencement;
- or completion of occupation of development.
When these triggers are reached, any obligations must be paid. To cover some of the cost of this, we adopted Section 106 monitoring fees in March 2024.
Fees
| Band | What is covered | Fee per obligation |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 to 5 dwellings or up to 1 hectare of land. | £280 |
| 2 | 6 to 10 dwellings or up to 3 hectare of land. | £336 |
| 3 | 11 to 49 dwellings or up to 10 hectare of land. | £392 |
| 4 | 50+ dwellings or more than 10 hectare of land. | £504 |
Legal fees
Applicants must sign an undertaking to cover legal fees in drafting and entering into the legal agreement.
Important note: This is to be done before any work can start on the agreement.
Make a request
Why you would do this
If it is not clear if they are fulfilled, you can make a formal request to confirm this.
The price of a request
- £35 per Section 106 Agreement/Deed of Variation.
How to pay
- See: Pay a planning fee.
How long it will take
- Around eight weeks.
Please note: If you apply as part of the conveyancing process, do it as soon as possible to avoid delays.
For historic S106 agreements not online, response times are longer as these are requested from the archives.
Contact us
For any query about the above, please email: planningobligations@calderdale.gov.uk.