West Sussex County Council: Planning Obligations

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Planning obligations provide a means to secure necessary infrastructure in relation to new development.  They take the form of legally binding agreements between local planning authorities and persons with an interest in a piece of land or undertakings offered unilaterally by a developer.  Their purpose is to make acceptable development which would otherwise be unacceptable in planning terms.

The legislative basis for planning obligations is contained in Section 106 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 (amended by Section 12 of the Planning and Compensation Act 1991).

Circular 05/2005 provides Government guidance on the use of planning obligations. It contains five tests that a planning obligations must meet, these are:

1. Relevant to planning;
2. Necessary to make the proposed development acceptable in planning terms;
3. Directly related to the proposed development;
4. Fairly and reasonably related in scale and kind to the proposed development; and,
5. Reasonable in all other respects.