You will have come across mentions of the CIL (Community Infrastructure Levy) in the Neighbourhood Plan and on this website, so we thought it might be useful to quickly explain a bit more and what role the Neighbourhood Plan has to play.

If you want a more detailed description about the CIL and what it is used for, check out the Government’s Planning Portal, but basically it’s a financial contribution paid by developers to cover the cost of improvements to the local area.

What this means in practice is that there’s cash made available whenever new houses are built, as the developer has to pay CIL to the District Council Planning Department.  Normally the town or village would get 15% of this for local infrastructure projects, but with a Neighbourhood Plan in place the share goes up to 25%, i.e. 66% more!

So there’s cash in it for the village and even more cash if we have a Neighbourhood Plan.