Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 2:28 pm on 18 October 2016.
Could we have a statement from the planning Minister, leader of the house, in relation to local authorities’ use of section 106s, and in particular their use when considering self-build or small residential developments? Section 106s can be a very useful tool in commercial developments, attracting moneys in for education and for other community facilities, but surely they cannot be a tool that can be used to leverage money out of self-build or small developments of three or four houses. That could have a detrimental impact on small-scale builders, which, especially in rural areas, can have an enormous economic impact if those builders are allowed to progress, but section 106 used in the wrong way can actually prohibit those developments from going forward. There has been a recent court case that found in favour of the arrangements that apply to other parts of the United Kingdom, which do exempt small-scale developments from the use of 106s.