What a mayor can actually change

A Mayor of London cannot rewrite Section 106. It sits in an Act of Parliament, it is administered by the boroughs, and with the Community Infrastructure Levy it stands behind an estimated £5.5 billion in developer contributions agreed across England in 2022 to 2023. But a fixed, published, known-in-advance development charge already exists at City Hall. It has run since April 2012, it is called the Mayoral Community Infrastructure Levy, and the reasons it never replaced Section 106 are the same reasons a mayoral platform cannot.

On 14 August, in a recorded walk-and-talk before b2bv2v26 London, the urbanist Peter Murray OBE set out a built-environment platform for a 2028 mayoral run. He opens the event’s first canvas, Vision, on 8 September. Elsewhere in this series we set out what he proposes. Below, provision by provision, is what the office can and cannot do.

The claim, in his own words

The platform rests on certainty. A small builder cannot finance a site, he argues, because nobody can say what the scheme will cost.

“we have to deliver a greater certainty, not just of whether you’re going to get planning permission or not, but also what it’s going to cost you as an applicant”

His remedy is a single charge, fixed at the outset.

“What I’m suggesting is that actually there is a simple taxation system which the developer pays exactly the same amount of money, but he knows how much it is at the start.”

The diagnosis is not in dispute: 39% of new homes in 1988 and around 10% by 2020, on the House of Lords Built Environment Committee’s figures, and the collapse in firm numbers is corroborated by Savills research. He is candid that the design is unfinished.

“The election is two years away, and I’m still working on the process for larger projects and mixed use projects.”

The missing parts are where the difficulty lives.

Can a Mayor of London replace Section 106?

Not directly, and the obstacle is structural rather than political.

Section 106 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 is primary legislation. It lets “any person interested in land in the area of a local planning authority” enter into a planning obligation, enforceable by that authority. And in London that authority is not City Hall. Section 1(2) of the same Act is one line: “The council of a London borough is the local planning authority for the borough.” A mayor is not a party to these agreements as a general rule, and cannot amend the statute behind them. There is one exception, and it proves the shape of the power rather than widening it: under section 2E of the same Act, where the Mayor has already taken over a specific application, agreeing its planning obligation becomes “a function of the Mayor of London instead of a function of the local planning authority”. That reaches one application at a time, not the system.

Could a mayor build a replacement charge instead? Every levy City Hall raises exists because Westminster legislated for it first: the Community Infrastructure Levy under Part 11 of the Planning Act 2008, the Crossrail business rate supplement under the Business Rate Supplements Act 2009, which demands a prospectus, consultation and usually a ballot of business ratepayers first. The precedent cuts both ways. A Mayor of London did impose a new charge on London business, by going to Parliament.

Westminster has already tried this. Part 4 of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 created an Infrastructure Levy to absorb much of Section 106. It was never commenced. Housing minister Matthew Pennycook confirmed in a written answer tabled on 2 December 2024 and answered on 7 January 2025 that the government would not commence provisions “that would cut across our commitments to streamline the planning process and unlock development, such as the Infrastructure Levy”.

A London footnote deserves more attention than it has had. Section 139 of that Act is titled “Restriction of Community Infrastructure Levy to Greater London and Wales”. Parliament legislated to keep CIL running in London, with the Mayor named as its charging authority, while withdrawing it from most of England. That provision is not in force either.

Which of these powers does City Hall already hold?

More than the platform implies, and less than it needs.

Section 206(3) of the Planning Act 2008 makes the Mayor “a charging authority for Greater London (in addition to the local planning authorities)”. Mayoral CIL has run since April 2012. The current schedule, adopted in 2019 and index-linked since, charges £80, £60 or £25 per square metre by band, and £185 for central London offices. It is fixed, it is published, and a developer knows the number before buying the site. It has raised more than £1 billion.

It has not replaced Section 106, for three reasons that no mayor can vote away.

• It cannot fund affordable housing. The House of Commons Library is flat: “Only planning obligations agreed in section 106 agreements can be used to deliver affordable homes”. Section 106 delivered 44% of all affordable homes in 2023 to 2024.
• Mayoral CIL is narrower still. The regulations restrict the Mayor’s CIL spending to roads and other transport facilities. It repays Elizabeth line financing, and is no general substitute for planning obligations.
• The Mayor does not even set the rate alone. Section 212 requires an examiner “independent of the charging authority”; section 213 bars approval of a schedule “if ... the examiner recommends rejection”. Not theoretical: the MCIL2 examiner cut the Elephant and Castle Opportunity Area out of the central London charging area, and the Mayor complied.

The pattern repeats. The Mayor writes the London Plan under section 334 of the Greater London Authority Act 1999, and borough plans must be in general conformity with it, but the Secretary of State appoints its examiners and may direct changes. The Mayor can call in strategic applications under section 2A and direct refusal under the 2008 Order, but only on that Order’s tests. When the reach widened on 11 May 2026 to schemes of 50 or more homes a borough is minded to refuse, it widened because Westminster made a statutory instrument.

The powers audit

• Replace Section 106 with a fixed up-front charge. Mayor alone: No. Needs Westminster: Yes, primary legislation. Already held: Partly. Mayoral CIL is fixed and up front, but is barred from affordable housing and restricted to transport.
• Set a London-wide development charge rate. Mayor alone: Partly. Needs Westminster: No. Already held: Yes, via Mayoral CIL, subject to binding independent examination.
• Make the built environment the mayoral constituency. Mayor alone: Yes. Needs Westminster: No. Already held: Yes, part-running as Good Growth by Design.
• Raise housing delivery. Mayor alone: Partly. Needs Westminster: Funding settlement is set centrally. Already held: Yes, via grant, GLA land and call-in.
• Reopen the tall-buildings policy. Mayor alone: Partly. Needs Westminster: Secretary of State can direct changes. Already held: The next Plan is due for adoption before the 2028 term.
• Ease post-Grenfell regulatory load. Mayor alone: No. Needs Westminster: Yes, the building safety regime is national. Already held: No.

The strongest counterargument

The strongest case against the fixed charge does not come from City Hall’s opponents. It comes from City Hall.

In its 2023 response to the Infrastructure Levy consultation, the Greater London Authority wrote that “setting rates at the level needed to maintain current levels of affordable housing would make less viable developments undeliverable. Conversely, setting lower rates would reduce contributions and the amount of affordable housing and infrastructure provided.” That is the fixed-charge trap in one sentence, written by the institution the platform seeks to lead. The GLA’s own warning, published on 11 July 2023, put the potential cost at 4,500 to 10,000 fewer affordable homes in applications referred to the Mayor over three to five years.

The evidence points the same way. Lord, Cheang and Dunning in Urban Studies found a flat levy can crowd out, in weaker markets, the affordable housing negotiation would have secured. MHCLG’s own research found CIL’s impact is “proportionately more where the CIL rate is high and/or market values are lower”. A flat charge falls heaviest on the marginal scheme and lightest on the most profitable, the opposite of what value capture is for. Even the Home Builders Federation, whose members would pay it, warned a flat-rate levy “would make many schemes unviable”.

He goes further than diagnosis, into a direct charge against the current mayor.

“It is something which the current mayor has no interest in at all.”

That does not survive contact with the record. The office publishes the city’s statutory spatial strategy, most recently a new draft on 16 July 2026; runs Good Growth by Design with 53 Mayor’s Design Advocates; and secured 5,550 affordable homes through call-in since 2020. The accurate charge is not indifference but under-delivery: 5,188 starts against a target of 17,800 to 19,000 to March 2025, itself revised down twice. That is the harder criticism to make of the office.

City Hall’s own answer, from the person who would have to give it, is that the relationship has changed. Tom Copley, the Deputy Mayor for Housing and Regeneration, told the Local Democracy Reporting Service in April 2026 that City Hall had “never had this level of engagement with a government”, and that the change had been “like night and day”. He is the interested party and should be read as one. His claim is also about central government rather than about the development industry, which is the sector the platform is addressed to, and on that narrower question neither man’s characterisation has been tested.

What this article could not establish

Four things, and we would rather say so.

• Whether a mayor could reach the same practical effect through London Plan policy and CIL rate-setting, without Westminster. That turns on a reading of planning law this article does not attempt. Everything above is taken from the face of the statutes, and this question is not answerable from them.
• Whether the transport restriction on Mayoral CIL could be loosened without a new Act. That restriction sits in regulation 59(2) of the CIL Regulations, which is secondary legislation made under the 2008 Act, not primary. Widening what the Mayor’s levy may fund might therefore be a smaller job than replacing Section 106. Whether it could be done by statutory instrument alone, and whether the affordable-housing bar would survive it, is not answerable from the text of the regulations.
• Whether up-front cost certainty actually changes a development lender’s credit decision. It is the platform’s central claimed benefit, and no published study tests it directly. The nearest, 2018 research for the Royal Town Planning Institute, found that lenders generally wait for permission rather than pricing planning risk at all.
• What the proposal becomes for larger and mixed-use schemes, because its author says it is still being written.

How this article was sourced

Every statutory position above is taken from the face of the Act or regulation cited, each one linked to legislation.gov.uk and each one read directly rather than summarised from secondary reporting. Where a question turns on legal judgement rather than the plain text, this article says so and stops. It is not legal advice, and no part of it has been settled by counsel.

He is quoted verbatim throughout from the conversation recorded on 14 August 2026. He states an intention to stand in 2028; he is not yet a candidate, and RealTimes does not characterise him as one. RealTimes convenes the event he opens on 8 September, which is a conflict a reader is entitled to weigh. This piece contradicts him in several places. It was written by the editorial desk, was not submitted to him for approval, and any correction or response he wishes to make will be published here in full.

Questions this raises

• What planning powers does the Mayor of London actually have? The Mayor writes the London Plan, can direct refusal of or take over strategic applications, and charges Mayoral CIL. Boroughs decide almost everything else.
• Can the Mayor change Section 106? No. It is a section of an Act of Parliament, and only Parliament can amend it.
• What is Mayoral CIL? A fixed charge per square metre of new floorspace, levied across Greater London since 2012, funding the Elizabeth line. The Mayor proposes the rate; an independent examiner must clear it.
• Who decides planning applications in London? The 32 borough councils and the City of London Corporation, except where the Mayor intervenes on strategic schemes.
• What would need to change nationally for a fixed development charge to work? Primary legislation, plus an answer on how affordable housing is funded once negotiation goes. Parliament passed such a law in 2023 and the government declined to commence it.