Community Benefits Charge

Project Purpose and Overview

The Town of Grimsby has begun work to establish a new Community Benefits Charge (CBC) Strategy and By-law under the Planning Act.

What is a CBC?

A CBC is a new growth-funding tool under the Planning Act that allows municipalities to levy a charge against buildings or structures with five storeys or more and with 10 or more residential units. The CBC provisions replace the former Section 37 height and density bonusing in the Act.

Municipalities can use CBCs to fund a wide-range of new growth-related capital costs, if those costs are not already recovered from development charges and parkland provisions.

The prescribed maximum CBC rate (as per O. Reg. 509/20) is 4% of the property’s land value prior to the day of building permit issuance.

CBC Strategy

Prior to enacting the charge, the Planning Act requires municipalities to prepare a Community Benefits Charge Strategy. The Community Benefits Charge Strategy is required to document the increase in demand for additional facilities, services and matters as a result of qualifying development, document the projects that would be funded to mitigate these impacts and calculate a charge to recover eligible costs.

To set a community benefits charge, the Town of Grimsby must:

develop a community benefits charge strategy that identifies the facilities, services, and matters that will be funded with CBCs and comply with prescribed requirements.
pass a by-law