Stroud District Council (SDC) have been operating its Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) charging schedule since April 2017. The CIL legislation allows SDC as a charging authority to collect funds from new housing developments being built in the district, with the money then used to deliver supporting community infrastructure to deal with the additional demand and pressures on local infrastructure. This includes supporting the creation, improvement and maintenance of accessible natural green space, woodland, river corridors and biodiversity.
There are two collection streams:
1) Money for ‘strategic’ infrastructure, and
2) Money for 'neighbourhood' infrastructure.
Local Town and Parish Councils are given their share for the neighbourhood collection for them to decide how to spend that money on very local needs, like play parks, neighbourhood orchards, local sports facilities, community centres, etc and are termed 'local projects'. SDC are responsible for allocating funding for projects that are considered to be ‘strategic infrastructure’.
Strategic infrastructure projects will serve the needs of residential areas far outside the immediate neighbourhood of that project location. Local projects serve mostly the population within that specific Town or Parish.
SDC are now looking for those interested in applying for the Strategic Infrastructure fund for 2020/21 financial year and are interested in large projects that may cost tens of thousands of pounds.
All CIL funding bids are received by SDC’s CIL team no later than 13th September 2019. See Bid Proforma here.
In addition to these bids, any expressions of interest (EOI) for future financial years would also be welcomed and will be helpful in preparing their new ‘Infrastructure Funding Statement’ (as required by the new CIL Regs 2019) which will replace the Reg 123 list.
If you would like to discuss this with a member of the SDC Infrastructure team, please contact 01453 754325 or email CIL@stroud.gov.uk