Standard S106 agreements: will they actually speed up planning

The government wants to standardise Section 106 agreements for medium-sized housing sites in England. The attraction is obvious: if applicants and local authorities are repeatedly negotiating similar legal provisions, a common starting point should save time and reduce one source of post-resolution delay.

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But standardising the agreement is not the same as standardising the obligation. And that distinction is likely to determine how much difference the proposals make in practice.

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The consultation, published on 25 August, proposes four templates: a bilateral Section 106 agreement, a unilateral undertaking and affordable housing schedules for full and outline permissions. The intention is not to prescribe the planning obligations themselves, but to provide a more consistent legal framework within which they can be secured.

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There is good reason to do this. Section 106 negotiations can continue long after the planning merits of a scheme have effectively been settled. Time spent negotiating familiar drafting can delay the issue of permission without improving the development or changing what it is required to deliver. For medium-sized schemes in particular, that delay can be disproportionately costly.

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Standardisation should help strip some of that friction out of the process. It may also expose where the real difficulties lie.

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The hardest Section 106 discussions are rarely about boilerplate provisions. They are about what a development should provide, when obligations should bite and whether those requirements work with the delivery of the scheme. Affordable housing, financial contributions, review mechanisms, phasing and infrastructure can all turn on the circumstances of the particular development.

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A national template cannot remove those questions. In some cases, it may simply make them more visible.

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That makes early agreement of Section 106 heads of terms more important, not less. If the substantive obligations remain unresolved when an application reaches committee, standard drafting can only do so much to accelerate the permission afterwards. Applicants need to understand the likely obligations and their commercial consequences as part of the planning strategy, rather than treating the legal agreement as something to deal with at the end.

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The affordable housing schedules will be a particularly important test. The government is pursuing these reforms while the market for Section 106 affordable homes remains difficult in parts of the country. More consistent drafting may make agreements easier to negotiate, but it cannot make an undeliverable obligation deliverable.

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The proposals are therefore useful, but their value should not be overstated. A better standard agreement could remove unnecessary legal negotiation and free applicants and authorities to concentrate on the issues that genuinely require judgement.

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If that encourages those discussions to happen earlier, standardisation could make a meaningful difference. If the same substantive disagreements are simply inserted into a standard document at the end of the planning process, the time saving may be much more modest.

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The consultation closes on 20 October 2026.