# New Towns Act 1981, Paragraph 5A


(1) A development corporation submitting an order to the Secretary of State under this Part of this Schedule may include in the order a direction that compensation is to be assessed in accordance with section 14A of the Land Compensation Act 1961 (cases where prospect of planning permission to be ignored); and if it does so the following provisions of this paragraph apply.
(2) The corporation must submit a statement of commitments together with the order.
(3) A “statement of commitments” is a statement of the corporation’s intentions as to what will be done with the project land should the acquisition proceed, so far as the corporation relies on those intentions in contending that the direction is justified in the public interest.
(4) Those intentions must include the provision of a certain number of units of affordable housing.
(5) The notice under paragraph 2(1) must—
(a) state the effect of the direction, and
(b) name a place where a copy of the statement of commitments may be seen at any reasonable hour.
(6) The Secretary of State may permit the corporation to amend the statement of commitments before the decision whether to confirm the order is made.
(7) But the Secretary of State may do so—
(a) only if satisfied that the amendment would not be unfair to any person who duly made or could duly have made an objection for the purposes of paragraph 4, and
(b) only if the statement of commitments as amended will still comply with sub-paragraph (4).
(8) If the Secretary of State decides to confirm the order under paragraph 3, the Secretary of State—
(a) may confirm the order with the direction included if satisfied that the direction is justified in the public interest;
(b) otherwise, must modify the order so as to remove the direction.
(9) If the order is confirmed with the direction included, the notice under paragraph 5 must—
(a) state the effect of the direction,
(b) explain how the statement of commitments may be viewed, and
(c) explain that additional compensation may become payable if the statement of commitments is not fulfilled.
(10) In this paragraph—
“the project land” means—
(a)the land proposed to be acquired further to the compulsory purchase order, and
(b)any other land that the corporation intends to be used in connection with that land;
“unit of affordable housing” means a building or part of a building that is constructed or adapted for use as a separate dwelling and—
(a)in the case of a building in England, is to be used as—
(i)social housing within the meaning of Part 2 of the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008, or
(ii)housing of any other description that is set out in regulations made by the Secretary of State, or
(b)in the case of a building in Wales, is to be used as housing of a description that is set out in regulations made by the Welsh Ministers.

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Source: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1981/64/schedule/4/paragraph/5A (the official version)
Page: https://openlegislation.uk/new-towns-act-1981/schedule-4/paragraph-5A
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Source: legislation.gov.uk, The National Archives.