Issue - meetings

Legislation and planning practice guidance enables the Council to charge a monitoring fee for Section 106 Agreements.

This report seeks to introduce new charges to cover some of the administration costs of monitoring future Section 106 agreements which if approved will be added to the Councils Planning Fees and Charges Schedule.

Following consideration, the Committee unanimously resolved to:

(1)      Approve the introduction of new fees from the 1 April 2026 to help cover:

a)    Administration and monitoring of Section 106 agreements as set in paragraph 3.4 table 1

b)   Long term monitoring of legal agreements in relation to biodiversity net gain provision as set out in paragraph 4.6 table 2.

(2)      Publish the monitoring fee as set out in tables 1 and 2 on the Council’s website.

Legislation and planning practice guidance enables the Council to charge a monitoring fee for Section 106 Agreements.

The Committee received a report seeking to introduce new charges to cover some of the administration costs of monitoring future Section 106 agreements.

The following matters were considered:

a)            Mole Valley. In response to a Member query the Head of Planning Policy and Economic Development confirmed that Epsom and Ewell had aligned with Mole Valley as the most straightforward, transparent approach to Section 106 monitoring fees. Other East Surrey authorities all did slightly different things such as fixed cost per agreement.

b)            Biodiversity Net Gain. In response to a Member query the Head of Planning Policy and Economic Development confirmed that the council did have an in-house qualified ecologist to monitor biodiversity net gain requirements.  When the new unitary was in place there would be a bigger pool of ecologists.  The Member also asked how a satisfactory monitoring service could be provided for 30 years for just £6k and thought this fee was far too low. The Head of Planning Policy and Economic Development explained in detail how this figure was reached and included standard approaches so estimated the number of statutory reporting years would be 8 of the 30. Certain documents must be submitted at certain times over that 30 years but not every year. There would be some years there would be no work to review and other years there would be monitoring submission years. He also confirmed that it would need to be reviewed in a year or two by the new authority.  In the meantime, the current fees were considered reasonable to adopt.

c)            Current charges. In response to a Member query the Head of Planning Policy and Economic Development confirmed that at present there was no S106 monitoring fees applied.

d)                  Terminology. In response to a Member query the Head of Planning Policy and Economic Development confirmed that in section 3 of the report the terminology of administration and monitoring fee, administration and compliance fees, and monitoring fee all meant fee for monitoring and administration. Therefore, compliance was the same as monitoring in this case, just using different words for the same thing.

Following consideration, the Committee unanimously resolved to:

(1)      Approve the introduction of new fees from the 1 April 2026 to help cover:

a)    Administration and monitoring of Section 106 agreements as set in paragraph 3.4 table 1

b)   Long term monitoring of legal agreements in relation to biodiversity net gain provision as set out in paragraph 4.6 table 2.

(2)      Publish the monitoring fee as set out in tables 1 and 2 on the Council’s website.