| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:More flats - over Waitrose West Ealing | |
| Posted by: | Simon Hayes | |
| Date/Time: | 13/06/22 07:47:00 |
| Wow, some very simplistic reasoning from the cycling brigade. Perhaps try haven’t been following the planning debacles in Ealing over the past decade. Councils are entitled to collect money from developers as part of any granting of planning permission, under what’s called a Section 106 agreement. That money is supposed to be used to provide the infrastructure required to service the population growth (and cycling infrastructure doesn’t count). This includes medical facilities and other essentials. Ealing has been spectacularly poor in declaring how much it has taken from developers or where the money has been spent. It’s clear that many developments have had little or no s106 money used to provide the basics. The consensus is that Julian Bell, Peter Mason and the rest of the planning cohort wanted to keep their developer friends ‘onside’ to continue making Ealing an attractive proposition. Obviously those MIPIM freebies to Cannes weren’t in vain. An alternative to s106 agreements has been available for years, the Community Infrastructure Levy. As the name implies that money has to be spent on providing such things as GP surgeries, schools and all the rest. It’s ring fenced for those types of project and is calculated on the square metrage of the development. The sums would be more substantial than s106 monies given the size of developments locally. Ealing won’t introduce the CIL, despite having it under ‘consideration’ since 2016, largely because it prefers profits to stay in the hands of developers rather than being distributed for the benefit of residents. That policy isn’t going to change any time soon. |