The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government opened a consultation on 25 August 2026 on standard planning agreements for medium-sized housing sites in England. The proposals concern obligations under section 106 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990.
The documents are draft templates rather than final law. They are intended to reduce repeated negotiation over standard provisions and make the planning process more predictable for local authorities and developers.
Which developments are covered?
The consultation uses the new National Planning Policy Framework category of medium development. It covers housing sites that:
- provide between 10 and 49 homes, inclusive; and
- have a site area of up to 2.5 hectares.
Section 106 obligations can be used to make a development acceptable in planning terms, including by securing affordable housing, infrastructure contributions or other site-specific mitigation.
The four proposed templates
The government is seeking views on four documents:
- a bilateral agreement with standard clauses, financial-contribution schedules and council covenants;
- a unilateral undertaking with standard clauses and a financial-contribution schedule;
- an affordable-housing schedule for full planning permissions, including a discretionary cascade mechanism; and
- an affordable-housing schedule for outline planning permissions.
The templates are designed to become a common starting point. Site-specific obligations would still need to satisfy the legal and policy tests applicable to the particular development.
Why this matters
Negotiating Section 106 agreements can delay planning decisions and create disproportionate costs for smaller developers and local planning authorities. Greater standardisation may shorten drafting time and allow negotiations to focus on genuinely site-specific issues.
The 2026 National Planning Policy Framework states that relevant national model planning obligations should be used unless there are strong reasons to use a different obligation. The consultation therefore indicates how future agreements may be structured in practice, but the draft documents should not yet be treated as mandatory forms.