Unscrupulousbuilders owe Arun thousands

The companies and individuals have failed to pay the cash imposed as a condition of planning approval to bolster public services.

The amount which the district council is owed is equal to just under 21 for each of the area's 68,009 council tax payers.

The total outstanding comes to 1,420,445. Of this, 414,664 should have been paid up. The rest is due when work starts on specific schemes or certain milestones in developments have been reached.

The council is making site visits to ensure either that work has yet to begin or that the trigger points for payment are still some way off.

The outstanding payments date back up to nine years. Arun has reviewed 73 agreements made in that period for the money to make sure the payments which should have been made have been accounted for.

The payments are legally known as section 106 agreements. They are imposed on developers by councillors to go towards services such as libraries, schools and play areas to make up for the impact on them of residents of new homes.

But Arun had failed to review the agreements since 1998. Its officers have spent the past 18 months looking again at all the agreements.

Where payments are owed, chasing letters are being sent out. A failure to continue to pay up brings the council's debt collection service into action. Arun head of planning services Howard Cheadle outlined the situation to councillors at recent meetings of the Joint Downland and Joint Western Arun area committees.

He said afterwards: 'The most important point to note is that a section 106 agreement only becomes due when development commences or such other later trigger date as may be agreed, such as number of houses completed, is activated.

'In many cases, the developer may never proceed and so payment is not required.'