Council denies £290k planning levy was 'punishment'

A council has denied it issued a £292,174 bill to one of its residents as a punishment for making a planning mistake.

Businessman David Drew was told to make the community infrastructure levy (CIL) payment after building a home for his family, including his elderly parents.

Planners initially told him to knock it down for being 10m away from the site on the original plans, but following an appeal he was told it could stay.

Wokingham Borough Council said it now had no option but to ask for the money, because the house was built in the wrong place.

The CIL was brought in to provide councils with funds for improvements, like new road junctions and schools, to cope with demand from new housing developments.

Self-builders, like Mr Drew, were meant to be exempt, but they had to apply to be let off the levy before starting work.

He had been granted an exemption, but was told he had to apply for a fresh permission after planners saw the house was not in the original location. That meant he was now liable to pay the levy.

Mr Drew admitted he had made "a massive mistake" but said the demand for a CIL payment was more like a fine than the levy it was supposed to be.

Paying it had forced him to take out a second mortgage on the house, near Hurst.

"It just totally destroys your mental health, the stress and the trauma," he said. "The amount of fine you end up with is totally disproportionate to the mistakes you make."

The council said it would consider his Mr Drew's request for an independent inquiry if he asked for it in writing.

Neighbouring West Berkshire Council has already refunded some residents after accepting it had been over-zealous in enforcing the CIL rules.

But Wokingham Borough Council's leader, Liberal Democrat Stephen Conway, said Mr Drew's situation was different.

"If this was a case of somebody failing to fill in a form correctly, we would of course give some latitude," he said.

"But we don't have latitude just to say because it's been built retrospectively we don't want to apply CIL.

"The regulations are clear on that and it would be very unfair on people who pay CIL if we were to just say, well in this case we're not going to require somebody to pay."

Mr Drew has been supported by Steve Dally who received a refund from Waverley Council, in Surrey, and who is running a group campaigning for the reform of the CIL system.

He has been calling on the government to clarify to councils how they should apply the legislation to home owners, describing the current system as "a postcode lottery".

Mr Dally said with people having been threatened with huge bills, and even the possibility of being jailed for non-payment, it was akin to "another Post Office style scandal".

He is due to meet his MP, former Conservative chancellor Sir Jeremy Hunt, to see if he can get housing minister Matthew Pennycook to meet campaigners who say they have fallen foul of the CIL system

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