Thanks for your question, Tim – an interesting and salient one for many self builders!

Back in September 2013, the government announced that it would be exempting self builders from the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) – which is basically a tax on development, levied in order to fulfill infrastructure requirements. At the same time, Don Foster (then communities minster) revealed the government was also looking at relieving self builders from the burden of the CIL’s predecessor; Section 106 charges. The original plan was for both exemptions to be in place by the end of January this year – as we reported at https://www.self-build.co.uk/cil-exemption-confirmed-self-builders

While there’s been a good deal of progress on a self build exemption from the CIL, which is set to be debated at parliamentary committee on 11th Feb (check out https://www.self-build.co.uk/cil-relief-progress for more info), things have unfortunately gone a bit quiet on Section 106. I’d wager that’s because the government is focusing its efforts on ensuring the CIL legislation, which after all was brought in by the coalition, gets updated first.

After 6th April 2014 councils are supposed to be limited on how they can apply Section 106 charges, at any rate, in what is basically a bid to encourage them to drop these fees in favour of the CIL. But it looks like the government might delay this by a year… which makes it all the more important that it gives self builders a clear message on Section 106 sooner rather than later.

With any luck tomorrow’s debate on the CIL will also shed more light on S106 – if we find out any more we’ll report it back straight away!

Chris Bates, Deputy Editor & Online Editor, Build It magazine

Great news, Tim – the government has announced a consultation on exempting self builders from Section 106 charges. They’ve already done this for the CIL, so there’s a strong chance this will go through.

Check out the full story here: https://www.self-build.co.uk/section-106-scrapped