Exploring how delays in community infrastructure agreements have escalated.
Section 106 (S106) agreements are crucial legal mechanisms used by local authorities and home builders to ensure that new developments contribute appropriately to the new and existing community.
Negotiated between developers and local planning authorities, these agreements help offset the broader impacts of development through financial contributions towards infrastructure, affordable housing, transport, education, and other public services.
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Why are S106 agreements important?
Home builders do not just provide homes, but they are also integral to community investment in the UK. The industry contributes around £7 billion a year to local communities through S106 agreements. The places they build drive local economies and shops, boost local education services, improve community facilities and open spaces, and provide affordable housing, all of which are funded by the development through the contributions home building companies make to local authorities as part of the planning permission.
These significant contributions are rarely properly understood by the existing communities where development takes place. So often, opposition to local development is justified by concerns over strain on local infrastructure and facilities, so these agreements are a crucial part of ensuring that local communities see and feel the benefit that development brings to their area.
In recent years, the process by which these agreements are negotiated and approved has come under increasing scrutiny due to mounting delays that threaten to stall housing delivery and investment. This research aims to quantify how long just one step of the planning process can take.
Freedom of Information
To better understand the current state of S106 agreement timelines, the Home Builders Federation (HBF) submitted a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to local planning authorities across England. These results are based on the data from more than 2,500 S106 agreements across over 50 local authorities.
The FOI exercise found that the average S106 approval timeline was:
- 2022/23: 425 days
- 2023/24: 459 days
- 2024/25: 515 days
In just two years, the average time required to finalise an S106 agreement has increased by 90 days - a 20% increase.
The responses also highlight the extremities that developers in some local authorities are facing. The maximum recorded timescale was 2,679 days, or more than seven years, for a single S106 agreement to complete the agreement process. The shortest average timescale reported by any of the respondent councils was 192 days.
Additionally, 35% of all S106 agreements took longer than 12 months to finalise. Across all responses, 76% of local authorities reported average timelines that exceeded a year, and over a third of councils had an average timeframe of over 500 days.
In 2024/25, 45% of LPAs had agreements finalised that had taken over 1,000 days to complete.
While there are no fixed timelines for S106 agreements, the current timescales are undoubtedly far longer than ideal. Streamlining the process would help reduce delays to housing delivery, provide greater certainty to developers and local authorities, and ensure that the associated community benefits - such as affordable housing and infrastructure - are delivered within a timely manner.
Causes of delays
Several factors contribute to these extended timelines:
- Under-resourced local authorities. Years of under-funding has forced local authorities to make difficult decisions with resource and staffing allocations. As a result, various departments, including planning, have suffered. While the Government has committed to support local authorities with 300 additional junior planning officers, research from HBF found that the number required in reality is 2,200 – with the Government’s pledge representing less than 15% of the current shortfall. Additionally, the Government has not yet made any commitment to local government capacity problems more broadly. With regard to S106 agreements, it is also critical that legal departments are sufficiently resourced,
- Lack of standardisation in agreement templates and processes across different local authorities. Each local authority tends to use its own templates, formats, and procedures for drafting and reviewing S106 agreements. This results in inconsistent expectations and increased drafting and negotiation time, particularly for developers operating across multiple jurisdictions.
- Lengthy negotiation periods. S106 agreements frequently require input and approval from multiple stakeholders beyond the local planning authority, including county councils, statutory consultees, legal advisors, and utility providers. Coordinating these parties, each with their own timelines and legal requirements, can cause considerable delays. Disputes over the scope of contributions or the phrasing of obligations can add further time and complexity.
- Legal complexity. The agreements must be robust enough to withstand legal scrutiny while remaining flexible to local needs.
HBF previously published research on the staffing crisis in local authority planning departments. The delays in negotiating S106 agreements are a clear example of how this plays out in reality:
- North Devon’s planning department was only at 53% staffing capacity, and 44% of S106 agreements over the last three years took longer than a year to approve.
- In Exeter, which operated at 77% capacity, 60% of S106 agreements took longer than a year and had an average approval timeline of 645 days.
- Stevenage – which is operating at 78% staffing capacity – had an average approval timeline of 520 days, with 65% of agreements taking longer than a year to finalise.
Impact of delays
Delays in completing Section 106 agreements have far reaching consequences, not only for developers but also for local communities and the broader housing market. These delays pose serious challenges at a time when housing need and associated infrastructure is increasingly acute and pressing.
The delays:
- Stall housing delivery, limiting the supply of new homes at a time when the UK faces a significant and widespread housing crisis. With demand for housing far outstripping supply, these delays make it even harder for many to access affordable and secure housing.
- Delay community benefits, such as new schools, roads, or affordable housing, which are often contingent on the completion of these agreements.
- Increase development risk and cost. Holding land without being able to proceed adds to financial pressure, particularly as interest rates, labour costs, and material prices fluctuate. This can render some projects financially unviable, especially for smaller developers who lack the capital reserves of larger firms.
- Strain relationships between developers, local authorities, and communities, resulting in frustration and thus increasing opposition to new developments. This breakdown in trust and efficiency not only impacts current projects but can also discourage future investment in the area.
Recommendations
To address the rising delays in S106 agreement approvals, a series of targeted measures should be implemented to improve efficiency, consistency, and overall outcomes:
- Increase resourcing for planning departments: Local planning authorities are currently under significant resource constraints, which affect their capacity to process planning obligations in a timely manner. To alleviate these challenges, government should allocate targeted funding to increase staffing levels within planning departments. By investing in dedicated S106 teams and offering professional development opportunities, councils can improve both the speed and quality of agreement processes.
- Develop national standard templates and best practices: A lack of standardisation in the drafting of S106 agreements often leads to protracted negotiations and inconsistencies across councils. The government, in collaboration with planning authorities and the development sector, should produce standardised procedural guidelines and clauses to minimise the need to draft agreements from scratch. In lieu of official standardisation, there could be clearer guidance and expectations on good practice.
- Encourage a more flexible use of cascade agreements where necessary to ensure homes can be built and give reassurance to the developer that if an RP cannot be found, that the Affordable Homes can be changed to an alternative tenure or as last resort, a payment made to the LPA in lieu of the Affordable Housing.
- Introduce statutory timelines for S106 agreements: Consideration should be given to implementing statutory or guideline-based timescales into the application and pre-application process for handling Section 106 negotiations and the drafting and signing of agreements.
- Monitor, benchmark, and report performance: Introducing monitoring and reporting of S106 performance metrics could drive improvements. Local authorities should publish data on average timescales, agreement outcomes, and compliance rates as part of the general reporting on S106 agreements through Infrastructure Funding Statements. This information could be used to benchmark performance across regions, highlight best practices, and identify areas needing intervention. Increased transparency can also build trust among stakeholders and help developers better plan and budget projects.