Are you running a Council or a Bank?
The House Builders Federation published a report last week on the unspent developer contributions accumulated over the past year across the Country. And it is a bit shocking, to say the least!
The “banked” contributions has increased by a staggering £800million to now reach a whopping £9billion. Yes, that is right, nine billion pounds of Community Infrastructure Levy and S106 contributions are just resting in Council’s bank accounts and not delivering on the vital infrastructure that is needed to improve the lives of local residents.
This includes £700 million allocated for Affordable Housing (or to put it another more practical way, c.a. 8,500 new homes) and £2 billion for schools and education (or to put it another way, 112,000 new school places).
To quote the bleeding obvious from the report: “Developer contributions are a vital mechanism for ensuring that communities see and feel the benefits of new development while helping to deliver the infrastructure and amenities that help to turn a new development into a thriving community. However, there is a risk that delays to infrastructure delivery will undermine public support for new development at precisely the moment when the Government is seeking to increase housing supply to meet its ambition of delivering 1.5 million new homes.”
On Thursday 7 May 2026 there is a Council election for 4,851 councillors across 134 of England’s 317 councils. This includes seats across London, Birmingham, Newcastle Upon Tyne and cities such as Bradford, Coventry and Milton Keynes. Half or a third of seats will be contested in a further 73 councils including Manchester and its surrounding councils, as well as councils around the country such as Sheffield and St Albans.
No doubt among the tens of thousands of candidates who will want to get elected, there will be sitting Councillors who are asking the public to re-elected them and the question is, why should the public vote you back in? What have you achieved to deserve their support again? There will also be a much larger number of candidates who want to take those Council seats. And many of those candidates will be running on anti-development tickets… You know the line “our schools, GPs, roads etc are all full to capacity – vote for me and I’ll stop development”.
But there is on average £19 million per council to provide the infrastructure to accommodate housing development… it is just that your Council is being run like a bank rather than a council.
So, when the candidates come knocking on your door and it is an incumbent, ask them: “what have you done with the CiL/S106 in our area?” and if it is a candidate who wants the seat, ask them: ”what will you do with the CiL/S106”. If the answer is “I will make sure it is spent on infrastructure projects” they deserve your vote… If not, you know what to do… don’t vote for the banker!
Best wishes,
Henry
07736121014