Community Infrastructure Levy: Homeowners

Gideon Amos Excerpts

Wednesday 29th April 2026 Westminster Hall

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Turner. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Godalming and Ash (Sir Jeremy Hunt) on bringing this important and overdue consideration of CIL to Westminster Hall.

We have heard some powerful contributions, and it is clear that there is a widespread and serious problem. Families are facing bills of £40,000 to £70,000—in some cases over £200,000—for what often amounts to a missing form. That is an awful and unacceptable situation, and it can be life-ruining for those involved. The lack of appeal, the mounting interest and the threat of people losing their homes are all real injustices. The system is broken and needs to be changed.

The Liberal Democrats agree with much of the substance of what has been said, but I must be direct with the right hon. Gentleman: Waverley borough council’s CIL charging schedule, which sets all the rules for the charging of CIL, all the forms and all the processes were put in place by the Conservative council administration a few years ago. The Liberal Democrat authority is doing its best to manage the system that was put in place by its predecessors. His party had ample time in government to fix the issue and, as we have heard, did not do so.

On the question of the discretion available to councils, the position is fairly clear. In December 2025, the High Court handed down a judgment in Luck v. Bracknell Forest borough council, and was unequivocal that once a valid CIL charge has fallen due, councils cannot lawfully cancel it. Councils find themselves with no alternative. Depending on what lies behind the original mistake or inaccurate charge, councils simply cannot wipe away the charge, as the Court has determined.

[John Milne (Horsham) (LD)]

The CIL rules manage to be too inflexible and too vague at the same time. My constituent Ruth has had to pay a £38,000 CIL charge because unfortunately her husband did not submit the correct forms, as a result of what turned out to be Alzheimer’s. As my hon. Friend said, any potential refund would be technically against the law, and the Government say they cannot intervene in the case because the correct rules have been followed. Does my hon. Friend agree that, while waiting for further legislation, the Minister needs as a matter of urgency to issue new national CIL guidelines and give councils clarity, consistency and the ability to correct injustices where appropriate?

[Gideon Amos]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. He makes the excellent suggestion that not only should we have guidance, but the regulations themselves need to be changed, in many of the ways that other hon. Members have already mentioned.

[Richard Foord]

Does my hon. Friend recall that our hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Mr Dillon) tabled a new clause on CIL guidance for the debate on the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill, but unfortunately the Government did not accept it? Does my hon. Friend agree that we ought to look at other legislative opportunities to correct the wrongs?

[Gideon Amos]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that the Government should do that. There have been opportunities to do something about this; there are opportunities to change the law. He seems to have read the later part of my speech, and is quite right to mention our hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Mr Dillon), who not only made that point in respect of that Bill but brought it to the attention of the Select Committee last year. Liberal Democrats in Parliament have been trying to get resolution and a change in the rules.

In Waverley, the council has gone further than the law requires. It has set up a discretionary review process, opening a few weeks from now in June, for householders who believe they have been wrongly charged. That is the right thing to do, acting within the limits of what the law allows it to do. But the council can only act up to and within the bounds of the law, which is rigid.

[Gregory Stafford]

Before the hon. Member moves on, I should correct what he said: CIL was introduced in Waverley in 2019, and the Liberal Democrats took over the council one month later. The idea that the Conservatives brought it in is utter nonsense. The Liberal Democrats have now had seven years to try to fix it, and they have not. I ask the hon. Member to use his influence on his fellow Liberal Democrats to encourage them to operate a system far more like those in other parts of the country that we heard about from my right hon. Friend the Member for Godalming and Ash (Sir Jeremy Hunt), which operate with more flexibility.

[Gideon Amos]

The amount of flexibility that can be exercised depends on the nature of the error in the process that is being discussed, so not every council can operate the same redress in the same situation. The hon. Gentleman confirms that it was a Conservative administration that drew up the CIL charging schedule, the forms and all the processes that underlie and guide—in fact, not just guide but narrowly dictate—how the council exercises control over CIL. Where the hon. Gentleman is right is that the rules need to change. The best way to change them would be to change the regulations in this place.

That brings me to the Minister and the Government. The Minister has said, including when my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury raised the issue, that CIL was never intended to be applied in this way, and I believe he is right. He has named the Liberal Democrat authority in West Berkshire as a good example of exercising discretion where the law allows that to be done, but naming good examples is not enough, and we need to do more.

We need three things from the Government on this issue, and we need them in this Parliament. We need a statutory definition of what constitutes a minor administrative error, so that homeowners are not penalised by tens of thousands of pounds for a missed form. We need a statutory right of appeal against CIL charges, with clear limits for resolution, and a clear lawful basis on which councils can waive or refund charges in cases of genuine homeowner error. Currently, that option can be exercised only in certain cases, depending on the nature of the error involved. I am grateful that the Minister has indicated in previous discussions that the Government will act, but we need to see action.

While on the subject of CIL, we should be honest about the wider problem. All the Members who have spoken—I think they have all been hon. Gentlemen—were right that it is necessary to fund infrastructure, so the rationale behind CIL is worth while. As the hon. Member for Farnham and Bordon (Gregory Stafford) pointed out, the CIL funds do need to be spent on delivering infrastructure.

The levy is a flat rate per square metre and bears no relation to the level of the uplift in land value before and after planning permission is granted. I confess that back in the 2000s when the measure was being put forward, I was part of a lively debate with bodies such as the British Property Federation, arguing that the levy should relate to the level of land value uplift. In some parts of the country, where we have clear viability challenges, there is very little land value uplift. The same level is charged as on a site with a massive land level uplift, where there is no viability problem. The state is missing out on land value uplift in places and the CIL is affecting viability in other places. We would suggest that the Government move towards a levy that relates to the land value increase that the landowner is gaining. That is necessary to fund schools, surgeries, GPs, roads, and all the rest of it.

The Minister is reportedly looking at the levy again; I urge him to be ambitious and make the changes we are arguing for. Patching the exemption rules is necessary, but it is not sufficient. The injustice that constituents are facing is real—we agree on that—but the schedule put in place by previous parties is what has guided Waverley’s actions. The council is doing what it lawfully can to address the issue, but the Government need to do the rest.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Jeremy Hunt]

That is quite an unusual thing to be told by the Chair, Mr Turner. I thank you for chairing this important debate and I thank all hon. Members present for some excellent contributions. I particularly want to thank my neighbour and hon. Friend the Member for Farnham and Bordon (Gregory Stafford) for his tenacious campaigning on this issue on behalf of my former constituents in Farnham and Haslemere. He made an excellent contribution. I also want to thank the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Gareth Bacon), who typically gave a very thoughtful and clear exposition of the issues we face. I also thank hon. Members from other parties who have spoken and intervened.

Before I come on to the Minister’s comments, I want to comment on what was said by the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos), because it was directly about my own local authority. He was right to say that a council cannot lawfully cancel a charge after it has become liable, but that does beg the question why there have been countless injustices in some councils, but not in others, and that is because there has been an element of choice in the way local authorities have decided to go about things.

To make the point that I am not being party political here, Lib Dem West Berkshire has chosen to be reasonable, do the right thing and make sure there is justice for people unfairly caught in the CIL trap, but Lib Dem Waverley has not. It has been in power for seven years and Waverley residents, a number of whom are watching this debate, have suffered badly.

[Gideon Amos]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that residents need redress. I will simply place on the record again that the nature of the errors or mistakes in charging can be different from one authority to another, which was very much the case with West Berkshire, where the nature of the charges being made wrongly was a different procedural error and therefore a different remedy could be applied. I hope that, in the spirit of being non-tribal with which he began this debate, he will accept that that is actually a fact.

[Sir Jeremy Hunt]

I absolutely accept that. Again, in that spirit of being non-tribal, the hon. Gentleman will know the number of times that his party and other parties have talked about the 14 years in which we had opportunities to fix things that we did not fix, so he will appreciate that the Liberal Democrats in Waverley have had seven years to fix the issue and have failed to do so. That is why so many people from Waverley are looking at this debate carefully. But he is correct to say that all councils have to operate within the law.

I want to move on to the Minister’s comments. First, I thank him for the interest that he has shown right from the start. I want to put on the record that the number of people affected is relatively small in the grander scheme of things, and it would have been easy for the Minister to decide there were other priorities. It is about 100 families—maybe a bit more, maybe a bit less—so the Minister could easily have decided to focus on other areas, but he has not. He has spent an enormous amount of time trying to address this. That is the right and proper thing for a Minister in a democracy to do; if there is an injustice that even affects one person, it is incredibly important that Ministers take note, and he has really done that.

The Minister also clarified the problems with the 2014 exemptions introduced by the coalition Government, which were designed to ensure that householders were not caught up in these regulations, but did so through such a bureaucratic and cumbersome process that many inadvertently have been. The issue of particular complexity relates to householders’ immediate liability from the moment that building starts, which seems entirely reasonable for a professional developer, but entirely unreasonable for a homeowner who may not be aware of that element of the law.

It is extremely welcome that the Government are going to consult on the CIL regulations. As a former Government Minister, I feel a tremendous amount of frustration and pain at the need for endless consultations. They can be of value, but they also slow things down. I recognise that the Minister wants to do this fast—I did groan when he said, “as soon as possible,” but then when he said, “before the summer break,” I took some encouragement. I think this is something that is moving forward.

In the options that the Minister consults on—he cannot respond to this, but it is something to take away—could we find a way of removing homeowners from CIL liability altogether? That way we move away from a system that is purely based on the square meterage of a development, to one based on the type of person doing the development. Could we change the regulations so that homeowners can at least always apply for an exemption retrospectively if an error has been made? Not being able to do so offends natural justice, and was an unintended consequence of the complexity of the original regulations.

I am grateful to the Minister for confronting head-on the fact that for many people, this is about getting justice for something that has happened, not ensuring that injustice does not continue to happen. He has been very open with me about the legal complexities involved, and I know from my time as Health Secretary how difficult it is to reopen retrospective cases. The Minister’s Department has enormous influence over local authorities, however, not least through setting their grants, so if the Department chose, it could find a way to put councils under pressure, where there are outstanding CIL cases and injustice, so that those cases get solved.

I recognise that what I ask is not easy, but it is absolutely the case that local councils are extremely dependent on the Minister’s Department for large chunks of their financing. I ask him to consider what levers he has at his disposal to make this happen, while at the same time thanking him for his ongoing interest and determination to address the issue. The final thing I will say is that I know someone in the Public Gallery got up at 4 am to attend this debate. I thank that person and all the CIL Injustice Group for their tenacious campaigning to try to right a truly awful wrong.