The Langley CAC court case, start to finish

If you only read one thing about development charges in Langley, read who pays for growth. This page is the companion: the one dispute that changed the rules, laid out in order so you can see how a council policy, a provincial law and a court ruling fit together. No villains here, just dates and documents.

Before: the policy

2014. The Province publishes its guide to community amenity contributions. The advice: keep them modest, negotiate them, tie them to real amenity costs, and don’t use them to capture a share of the land value that rezoning creates.

2018. Township council endorses Community Amenity Contributions Policy No. 07-166, built on that guide and on community and stakeholder feedback. CACs are collected at rezoning toward things like rec centres, affordable housing, fire halls and greenways.

October 18, 2021. Council updates the guidelines. Base rates stay at $6,808 per single-family lot and $3,507 per apartment, but a project asking for more density than the Official Community Plan allows now pays three times the base rate. Industrial and commercial projects are exempt unless council asks.

2022. A major revision of the policy, per the Township’s own 2025 staff report. The same year, a CAC for agricultural and other conversions is introduced for the Gloucester lands.

November 30, 2023. The Province’s Bill 46, the Housing Statutes (Development Financing) Amendment Act, receives royal assent. It creates amenity cost charges, a bylaw-based, fixed charge for amenities that any council can adopt after consultation. The signal is clear: the Province wants negotiated CACs replaced.

June 2024. Council adds a $550,000-per-acre target contribution for the Williams and Smith neighbourhood plan areas. The developer of the Martini lands puts the effect on its project at $32 to $39 million. In October 2024 council removes the Williams target and orders more consultation.

The case

Lorval Developments Ltd. v. the Township. A developer argues that a policy which calls itself “voluntary” and speaks of “targets” is, in substance, a mandatory fee: it has formulas, exemptions, collection timing and annual inflation adjustments, it says CACs are “intended to be collected” at fixed rates, and payment is expected before council adopts the rezoning bylaw. The Local Government Act gives municipalities specific tools to fund growth (DCCs, density bonus zoning, phased development agreements and, now, ACCs), and a free-standing amenity levy is not one of them.

June 20, 2025. Justice Coval agrees. Read as a whole, the policy operates as a mandatory amenity payment regime tied to rezoning, which the Township has no statutory power to impose. The policy is declared invalid. Two things the court did not decide: whether the amounts were unreasonable (not needed once the policy fell), and how the policy had been applied to any particular project (the evidence wasn’t there). The judgment is on CanLII under 2025 BCSC 1148.

After

July 7, 2025. Council adopts an Interim Policy Regarding Amenity Contributions. Staff may discuss contributions with applicants and negotiate case by case; a contribution is only allowed if the applicant initiates it or it arises in rezoning negotiations. The policy states plainly that the Township cannot impose a mandatory payment as a condition of rezoning. CAC money already collected keeps funding amenities under construction.

July 21, 2025. Staff bring council a draft Amenity Cost Charge Bylaw, No. 6115, for first reading and public consultation. It is built the way the Province’s law requires: seven named amenities, an estimated $992.5 million in costs, a growth share of 45 to 75 per cent per project, and a 25-year forecast of about 53,000 new homes. Proposed rates: $19,571 per single-family home, $13,584 per townhouse, $8,634 per apartment.

Fall 2025. Public information session and stakeholder consultation, run alongside the Official Community Plan update. The Chamber of Commerce flags both to its members.

December 15, 2025. The bylaw returns to council with a report on the consultation.

March 23, 2026. Council approves ACC Bylaw No. 6115 at the rates first proposed. It applies to applications filed after adoption; earlier applications stay under the interim policy.

May 2026. The Township, which had filed an appeal of the June 2025 ruling with the BC Court of Appeal, abandons it. The Langley Monitor reports the decision in June. No higher court ever revisits the old policy.

September 1, 2026. Law firm Fasken publishes a bulletin on the case, advising other BC municipalities to review any CAC policy that ties rezoning approval to a formula payment, and developers to look at whether contributions they were asked for were really negotiated.

What it means

For the Township, the practical change is already done: amenity funding now runs through a published bylaw with a project list, fixed rates and an annual public report, instead of a policy applied at rezoning. The amounts are a matter for the new council, which can amend the bylaw the same way it adopted it.

For the rest of BC, the ruling is a marker. Plenty of municipalities still run CAC policies with target rates; the City of Langley’s Amenity Contributions Policy (CO-80) is one. Whether those survive a challenge is now a live question, and the Province’s ACC tool is the obvious exit.

For residents, the money is still coming, just through a different door. See the full stack of growth charges on one new home, and the development charges decoder for every official document mentioned here.

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