Covid-19: Government proposes temporary amendments to CIL Regulations

In our previous article we anticipated the government might amend the CIL Regulations to help developers through the Covid-19 crisis. That has proven the case and the government has now proposed a number of temporary amendments to the CIL Regulations. Under the proposals, authorities will be able to:

• defer CIL payments;
• temporarily disapply late payment interest;
• return interest already charged where they consider it appropriate

The proposed measures are however, subject to a number of conditions and limitations:

Conditions and limitations

• The measures relating to interest apply only to interest accrued between the start of the lockdown and when these changes take effect;
• The measures will cease to apply ‘when the economic situation has recovered’; and
• Most importantly, the measures are intended to benefit only small and medium-sized developers with a turnover of less than £45m.

The government has not yet published the draft Regulations. It is currently not clear how the turnover restriction will be applied, presumably group companies or SPV companies established to carry out a specific development where the parent company's turnover exceeds the £45m threshold will be excluded. We will provide a further update once the draft Regulations are available.

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