CIL appeals: how to challenge a CIL bill or surcharge

 

A CIL appeal is not the same thing as a planning appeal. If your council has sent you a Community Infrastructure Levy bill you believe is wrong, or has added a surcharge on top of it, you cannot use the route you would use against a refused planning application. There are separate routes, they run on short deadlines, and most of them die the moment you start work on site.

There are also two different places a CIL appeal can end up. Arguments about how much you have been charged go to the Valuation Office Agency. Arguments about a surcharge, about the date the council says you started, and about a stop notice go to the Planning Inspectorate, acting for the Secretary of State. Sending it to the wrong one wastes the deadline.

 

Start with a review, not a CIL appeal

 

If you think the amount is wrong, you cannot go straight to an appeal. You have to ask the council to look at its own sum again first, and that request has a deadline of its own.

• ask in writing, to the authority that collects the levy
• ask before the end of 28 days beginning with the day the liability notice was issued
• send your written reasons with the request, because you are allowed to and it is your best chance to explain the error

The review has to be carried out by somebody senior to the person who did the original sum, and who had no hand in it. The council then has 14 days from the day it received your request to tell you what it has decided and why. It can either confirm the original amount or work out a new one.

Two limits catch people. You cannot ask for a review of a review, so you get one go at this stage. And you cannot ask for a review at all while you have a live claim for relief sitting with the council that you have not withdrawn.

 

Appealing how much you have been charged

 

This is the appeal that goes to the Valuation Office Agency. You can only use it if you asked for the review first, and then either you disagree with the answer or the council failed to give you one within its 14 days. The ground is simply that the amount has been worked out incorrectly.

Now the deadline, and it is the most misunderstood date in the whole system. You get 60 days beginning with the day the liability notice stating the original amount was issued. That clock does not restart when the review decision arrives. It has been running since the liability notice, so the review eats into it. If the council takes its full 14 days and you then spend a fortnight thinking about it, a large part of your 60 days has already gone.

You get one appeal of this kind per chargeable development, so there is no second attempt. If it succeeds, the appointed person works out a revised amount for you.

 

The other appeals that go to the Valuation Office

 

Four further arguments end up in the same place, and all four run to 28 days rather than 60.

• how liability has been split between owners: an owner of an interest in the land who is unhappy with the split has 28 days beginning with the day the demand notice setting out what they owe was issued
• charitable relief: 28 days beginning with the date of the decision on the claim, arguing that the value of the interest in the land was wrongly assessed
• the exemption for a residential annexe: 28 days beginning with the date of that decision, arguing that the council was wrong to decide the annexe does not sit wholly within the curtilage of the main house
• the exemption for self build housing: 28 days beginning with the date of that decision, arguing that the value of the exemption was worked out wrongly

There is also a fifth VOA route under Schedule 1 paragraph 9 where the dispute is about the chargeable amount or the amount of notional relief used in a Schedule 1 CIL calculation. That appeal has a 60-day deadline beginning with the day the relevant liability notice was issued, rather than the 28 days used for the four appeals above.

The danger of allowing commencement to overtake a chargeable-amount dispute is illustrated by R (Herod Property Ltd) v Westminster City Council [2026] EWHC 2122 (Admin). The developer expected its Class MA conversion to have nil CIL, but after starting work it had lost the ordinary regulation 113 / 114 route and ultimately faced a £380,326 demand including surcharges and interest.

R (Segrue Investments Ltd) v Swindon Borough Council [2026] EWHC 2080 (Admin) makes the deadline point from the other direction. The High Court treated the regulation 113 review and regulation 114 appeal machinery as an adequate alternative remedy. Later evidence about existing-building use did not turn regulation 65 into a late review route, and later correspondence did not restart the judicial-review clock.

Chargeable-amount disputes can also turn on what physically counts as GIA. CIL Appeal 1891221 is a useful example: one loft area with permanent stair access was accepted, while three hatch-accessed loft/storage areas were excluded on the evidence because they did not comprise a qualifying floor level. The case is a reminder to establish the measurement evidence before demolition rather than trying to reconstruct it afterwards.

The appeal about the split is worth knowing about, because it does more than move numbers around. If it succeeds, every demand notice the council has already issued for that development stops having effect, liability is divided up again, and a surcharge imposed on you can be cancelled outright.

Our pages on CIL exemptions and reliefs and the self build exemption explain what you have to claim, and when.

 

How to appeal a CIL surcharge

 

A surcharge is the penalty a council adds when a step in the procedure is missed, such as failing to take on liability, or failing to send in a commencement notice before starting. Our CIL surcharge guide explains the current penalties and interest. This appeal goes to the Planning Inspectorate rather than the Valuation Office Agency, and there are only three grounds you are allowed to run.

• the breach the council says happened did not actually happen
• the council never served a liability notice for the development the surcharge relates to
• the surcharge has been worked out incorrectly

You have 28 days beginning with the day the surcharge is imposed. Note what that clock hangs on: the day the surcharge was imposed, not the day a demand notice landed on the mat. The two are often different, and people lose the appeal by counting from the wrong one.

There is one genuine piece of good news here. While the appeal is outstanding, nothing is payable on that surcharge. Appealing in time buys you breathing space rather than a growing bill. If the appeal succeeds, the surcharge can be cancelled or worked out again.

 

Appealing the date the council says you started

 

If no Commencement Notice was sent, the council is entitled to decide for itself when the development began, and it will put that date in a Demand Notice. That date matters, because it drives when payment falls due and which surcharges apply.

Anyone served with a demand notice stating such a date can appeal to the Planning Inspectorate on the ground that the council has got the date wrong. The deadline is 28 days beginning with the day the demand notice was issued.

If the appeal succeeds, every demand notice already issued for that development stops having effect, the appointed person sets a corrected date, and a surcharge imposed on you can be cancelled. Our CIL process page sets out the notices in order.

 

Appealing a CIL stop notice

 

Where the levy goes unpaid, a council can serve a stop notice, which halts work on the site. There are two grounds of appeal against one, and both are narrow.

• the council did not serve a warning notice before imposing the stop notice
• the development the stop notice covers has not actually started

The deadline here is 60 days beginning with the day the stop notice takes effect.

Read the next part carefully, because it works the opposite way round from the surcharge appeal. A stop notice carries on having full effect while the appeal is running. Appealing does not suspend it, and carrying on with the work regardless is a criminal offence. If the appeal succeeds the notice can be quashed, and short of that the appointed person can correct a defect, an error or a wrong description in it, or change its terms, provided doing so causes no injustice to you or to anyone else involved.

 

Starting work kills most CIL appeals

 

This is the trap that costs people the most money, and it is worth reading twice. A review lapses if the development is commenced before the council has given you its answer. An appeal about the amount lapses if work starts before the decision arrives. The same goes for the charitable relief, annexe and self build appeals.

It is worse than that, because once work has started you cannot even ask. The right to request a review, and the right to appeal the amount, are both closed off once the development has been commenced. So it is not simply that a challenge already running dies: a challenge you have not made yet can no longer be made.

In practice that means a straight choice. You either get on site, or you keep your challenge alive. You cannot do both, and builders booked months in advance have quietly destroyed perfectly good appeals.

There is one narrow way out. Where planning permission was granted for the development after it had already begun, you can ask for a review, and appeal the amount, even though work has started. That covers the case where somebody built first and regularised it afterwards.

Our CIL frequently asked questions page goes further into what counts as commencement, and into the court decision behind this rule.

 

How a CIL appeal is handled

 

Every appeal in this part of the regulations is decided on paper. The procedure set out in the regulations is entirely in writing, and no hearing is provided for.

You appeal in writing, on a form obtained from the Secretary of State, or one to substantially the same effect, and you have to include what the form asks for. The completed form counts as your case, so do not treat it as a covering note. You can withdraw at any time by saying so in writing.

After that the appointed person acknowledges the appeal, gives it a reference number and says where anything further should be sent. Copies of your form go to the other people with an interest, who may then reply. They have 14 days from the day that acknowledgement was sent, unless a longer period is allowed. Everybody gets copies of what everybody else has said, and comments on those replies are due within a further 14 days of the end of that period.

The decision comes in writing, with reasons.

 

What a CIL appeal costs, and whether it is worth making

 

The levy is not a planning application fee, and the two should not be confused. Application fees are set nationally and are listed on our planning application fees page. CIL is separate, is set locally by each charging authority, and is worked out from floorspace.

On the appeal itself, the regulations allow the appointed person to make orders about costs, and about who pays them. That cuts both ways, so it is not a risk free exercise. Beyond that, what an appeal actually costs most people is time, and whatever professional help they decide to buy.

Before you commit, be honest about the ground you are running. These appeals are narrow. They ask whether a sum was worked out correctly, whether a breach happened, or whether a date is right. They do not ask whether the levy is fair, whether you can afford it, or whether the council should be spending it differently. If your complaint is one of those, no appeal will help.

The review is different, and it is almost always worth doing. It is quick, it is in writing, and it is the gateway to the appeal about the amount, so missing it does not merely delay you: it closes that appeal off completely.

Finally, a CIL bill only exists because permission was granted. If the underlying application is refused there is nothing to pay, and challenging a refusal is an ordinary planning appeal. See also our main Community Infrastructure Levy page for how the charge is worked out in the first place.

 

 

Relevant legislation for a CIL appeal

 

Links below go to legislation.gov.uk. Always check the “Changes to Legislation” panel at the top of each provision, because amendments are often listed there before they are written into the text.

• Community Infrastructure Levy Regulations 2010, Part 10: the whole of the appeals code, regulations 112 to 121
• regulation 112: who the appointed person is, so who actually decides each type of appeal
• regulation 113: the review of the chargeable amount, the 28 days and the 14 day answer
• regulation 114: the chargeable amount appeal, the 60 days and the one appeal limit
• regulation 115: apportionment of liability between owners
• regulation 117: the surcharge appeal, its three grounds and the 28 days
• regulation 118: deemed commencement, where the council fixes the start date
• regulation 119: CIL stop notices, the two grounds and the 60 days
• regulation 120: appeal procedure, the form and the representations periods
• regulation 121: the power to make orders about costs
• Planning Act 2008, Part 11: the Act the levy itself is made under

Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL)

 

CIL Appeals Page Updated: 4th September 2026