Dacorum Holds £8m Developer Cash: Playgrounds, Pitches, GPs

Dacorum Borough Council was holding £7,972,666 of money paid by developers on 1 May 2026, and its own papers show exactly which local projects it is meant to buy.

The figures are in a scrutiny report published for a meeting on Tuesday 1 September. Parish councils asked for the review, because of what the report calls “delays to and non-delivery of S106 obligation compliance”.

Section 106 money is what a developer agrees to pay when planning permission is granted, to soften the effect of a new estate on the area around it. It is tied by law to the locality, and most of it comes with an expiry date. If the council does not spend it in time, the developer can ask for it back.

What the money is buying

£780,004 is already allocated to projects under way. The largest are:

A further £1,672,045 sits in a pipeline, waiting for a project. That includes £373,000 for affordable housing in Berkhamsted after 2027, £225,417 towards reconfiguring Woodhall Farm Medical Centre, £208,834 for biodiversity work in the Hemel area, and £58,978 towards extending Kings Langley Surgery.

The two figures add up exactly to the £2,452,049 of S106 infrastructure funds in the council’s summary table. The rest of the £7.97 million is held under separate long-running obligations: £3,779,522 of SANG money and £1,548,920 of SAMM money, both to offset recreational pressure on the Ashridge Commons and Woods SSSI over an 80-year period to 2102, plus £192,175 for monitoring.

One pot has already passed its deadline

The clearest problem in the papers is small in money and large in what it shows.

A £25,000 contribution from the Spencers Park development at Three Cherry Trees Lane was paid to subsidise the local shop for its first five years. The fund expiry in the council’s own table is January 2025.

The report’s note explains why nothing was spent: “Local shop has existed for over 5 years.” Officers are now “seeking alternative project with view to deed of variation and extension of time”. In other words, the shop no longer needs propping up, the deadline has gone, and the council is trying to renegotiate what the money can be used for.

The Maylands wayfinding signage fund is close behind. Its expiry is given as March 2026, and the purchase order was raised that same month.

Collected fast, spent slowly

The gap is not evenly spread. In 2023/24 the council collected £2,459,615 and spent £82,851. The following year it collected £3,413,537 and spent £297,127. Spending recovered to £1,379,517 in 2025/26.

Only one contribution has been handed back to a developer since 2020. A £10,000 payment linked to Hemel Hempstead Rugby League Club on Pennine Way, received in July 2010 towards mitigating match day impacts, was returned in September 2023 because no suitable capital project was found before it expired.

Why things stall

The report is candid about the causes.

• Public open space. Older agreements committed the council to adopting open space on new estates. It now refuses to, calling it “an expensive liability”, and requires developers to appoint a management company. Legacy agreements where the transfer was agreed but never happened “often remain outstanding”.
• Capacity. The planning obligations team is small and its workload “has increased substantially since 2022”. Fixing compliance problems on historic agreements needs the legal team, which has its own constraints.
• Monitoring itself is fine. An external audit by TIAA in 2021 rated the process as giving “substantial assurance”, the highest level available.

What the council proposes to do

Officers recommend buying the public-facing module of Exacom, the software the council already uses to track planning obligations. It would let residents see, on the council’s website, when money is due, collected, allocated and spent, in real time. Watford, Milton Keynes and four London boroughs already publish that way. The recommendation says procurement approval is being sought.

The report also offers an annual report to councillors and parish councils “if Members feel this would be beneficial”, and gives S106@dacorum.gov.uk as the contact for queries and data requests.

What it means for you

If a playground, pitch or footpath near you was promised when an estate was approved, Appendix B is where you find out whether the money exists, who is supposed to deliver it, and when it runs out. Several of the funds have no expiry date at all, which means there is no deadline forcing anyone to act.

The meeting is at 7.30pm on Tuesday 1 September 2026 in Conference Room 2 at The Forum, Marlowes. Public participation is item 4 on the agenda. The contact listed for the meeting is Corporate and Democratic Support on 01442 228209.

We covered the Coronation Fields work the £271,331 is helping to pay for in our report on the games area and gym contracts, and we track new applications on our Hemel Hempstead planning news page.

Sources

• Dacorum Borough Council, Strategic Planning & Environment Overview & Scrutiny agenda, 1 September 2026 for the meeting date, venue, contact and item order.
• Section 106 agreement monitoring deep-dive report for the origin of the review, the public open space and capacity problems, the TIAA audit rating, and the Exacom and transparency recommendations.
• Appendix B, S106 funds for every project and figure quoted here: Table 1 for allocated projects, Tables 2 and 3 for the pipeline, Table 4 for the £7,972,666 held at 1 May 2026, Table 5 for the returned contribution, and Table 6 for the yearly collected and spent totals.

All figures are the council’s own, as published for the 1 September meeting. The totals in Table 4 are stated as at 1 May 2026.