University:
University College London
Course:
LAWS0006 | Public Law
Academic year:

2024
Views:

91

Pages:

2
Author:

Namira A.

Contracting In the Public Interest? Re-Examining The Role of Contract in Contemporary Town Planning Processes Date: 14 December 2023 Planning obligations and s.106 agreements Planning obligations negotiated between local planning authorities (LPAs) and developers often take a contractual form, made pursuant to s. 106(1) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. The Infrastructure Levy  The Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities can make regulations for a new Infrastructure Levy (s.137 and schedule 12)  Implementing this will take a long time (DLUHC, Technical Consultation on the Infrastructure Levy (2023)) Contractual Arrangements and Planning Practice  Contract might offer administrative efficiency and secure binding developer commitments but there are significant gaps in existing practice. LPAs depend on private developers to provide essential public services (Lee 2022)  The contractualization of planning processes reflects the 'normalization of market logics' in planning decision-making (Lord and Tewdwr-Jones 2014)  The use of contract for public service provision can involve enormous expense for the public sector and asymmetric lock-in Relational Contract Theory  Relational contractual norms Discrete contractual norms The Role of Contractual Safeguards  Imperfect information and inherent uncertainty lead to contractual safeguards (Williamson 1985)  What does this tell us about the 'bindingness' of s. 106 agreements?  Do these agreements have the 'substance' of a contract, or only the 'trapping (Mitchell 2013)?