Section 106 Agreements - Planning Obligations

Cheshire East seeks to mitigate the impact of new developments through planning obligations secured through S106 Agreements.

Section 106 are legally binding agreements negotiated between the Planning Authority and the applicant/ developer and any other parties that may have an interest in the land. A ‘unilateral undertaking’ is an agreement proposed independently by applicants.

Section 106 standard form

The Council’s standard S106 precedents are below:

This document is a standard form of s106 produced by Cheshire East Council. The Council will not ordinarily agree to changes to the definitions or clauses 2-16 contained within this document. You will need to produce title to the land the subject of the application.

Section 106 legal and monitoring fees

We charge for the legal fees associated with preparing and negotiating S106 agreements. You will be required to enter into an undertaking for costs prior to legal work commencing. The fees are charged at £220 per hour, this includes consideration of Unilateral Undertakings submitted to the Council as part of the planning application and Appeals process.

In addition, fees are charged to cover the costs of monitoring, managing and reporting of planning obligations through all new S106 Agreements in line with the Council’s Developer Contributions Supplementary Planning Document (March 2024), Regulation 122 (2A) of the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) 2010 (as amended) and National Planning Practice Guidance, effective from 01 May 2024.

The monitoring fee has two elements:

a fixed registration charge per Agreement; and
a fee based on the complexity of the S106 relating to obligation trigger points.

Section 106 agreement fees
Deed	Fee
Registration	£300 per Agreement
Monitoring	£485 per FINANCIAL obligation £45 per NON-FINANCIAL obligation

Definition of Agreement obligation

This is taken to be all obligations with a call to action, so applies to individual payment/transfer/submission and/or provision requirements commonly known as the ‘trigger’ point(s). For example:

Example calculation of Section 106 fees
Obligation type	Number of obligations	Calculation	Total
Deed Registration	Fixed Fee	£300.00	£300.00
Financial	8	£485.00 x 8	£3,880.00
Non-financial	12	£45.00 x 12	£540.00

TOTAL amount payable £4,720.00.

Relevant Agreements

Fees apply to all financial and non-financial planning obligations within s106 agreements, Unilateral Undertakings and Deeds of Variation/Supplemental Agreements (where necessary), reflecting the complexity of the development and monitoring requirements.

Where development has already commenced and there is a change to an existing Agreement obligation(s) (through a Deed of Variation or Supplemental Agreement) a new monitoring fee would be payable in addition to the monitoring fee paid in relation to the Original Agreement to capture the further and/or additional monitoring requirements.

For revised s106 Agreements in relation to development not yet commenced then the charge will be based on the new Agreement.

There are no bespoke arrangements or exemptions to the monitoring fees.