“Promised but never delivered” is the common, yet often unfair, attack against developers from residents for the non-delivery of a school, healthcare provision, highways, or other infrastructure alongside typically a housing development.

Unfair, because as the Home Builders Federation’s “Unspent developer contributions” report (21 October) shows, there is a serious failure by local authorities (LAs) to spend developers’ Section 106 (s106) and Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) contributions.

The HBF estimates that LAs in England and Wales are sitting on over £8 billion of s106 and CIL monies. The cash-strapped London Borough of Tower Hamlets is sitting on £262 million, including £21 million of s106 contributions fettered for affordable housing. Brent is sitting on another £189m, though as almost all of this is CIL, local communities can expect to wait longer for infrastructure to be delivered.

At a time when politicians and others are complaining about a lack of investment in schools, £2 billion of s106 contributions remains available to fund education projects. In some cases, LAs have sat on the cash for more than 20 years. Is there any wonder the public is sceptical about new development, as the all-important community benefits are not realised?

In the ward I represent in Reading, residents still bemoan the non-delivery of a much-needed primary school that was committed to over 30 years ago. In fact, I probably wouldn’t have become a councillor if it had been built – but that is another story.

What can developers do to tackle this issue? It probably wouldn’t look good to demand the money back, however, they could:

• Check the HBF’s spreadsheet for the relevant LAs’ records to see which contributions remain unspent.

• Write to the relevant LAs asking for confirmation as to whether their developer contributions have been spent yet and if not, exert pressure on the LAs’ chief executives and leaders to get on with the delivery of community benefits.

• Write to the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, Angela Rayner MP, asking the Government to put pressure on LAs to prioritise delivery of this already funded infrastructure for the benefit of local communities.

We all know hundreds of thousands of new homes need to be built across the country, but the public needs to be onside. Their lack of faith in the planning system is a major obstacle. To help turn this around, LAs must prioritise delivering the community benefits that have been promised and are already funded, while developers would do well to ensure this happens.