Planning details/drawings published to web!

Westford

Looking at starting the planning process for a domestic house soon. My query relates to a practice that occurs in Laois, but I'd be curious to know if it happens elsewhere. Basically from the moment you begin the planning process, every correspondence, including any submissions, decisions, and your full set of drawings (elevations, internal details, etc), are published to the planning website. It seems reasonable that some details may need to be made publicly available, such as elevations, conditions, etc. But surely internal design details are going a bit far. Not to mention that you may have worked long and hard with your 'not so cheap' architect, to come up with a design, which is now available to anyone with web access! Then there's the question of security! The idea of someone breaking into my house, with a full set of internal drawings available to them, is definitely a concern.
Querying it, or objecting to it, is a little difficult, when the planner is holding all the cards, and you're desperate for planning to go through. Does this happen in any other county. And has anyone ever tried to prevent the publishing of their planning drawings on the web?

smashey

It is the same in Donegal. All information regarding the application has to be made available for public inspection.

Westford

Yea...I agree that "the application has to be made available for public inspection", But there's a big difference in a member of the public, going into the local planning office, and requesting to see the file, And someone just accessing all your planning details with the click of a mouse! Publishing the elevations, with important details like ridge height, window positions, etc, is all good. But I can't see any logic behind the public needing to know where my kitchen or master-bedroom is located! I guess I'm really interested to see if anyone has been able to prevent the details going on the web. I have no problem with them being held for inspection at the planning office.

Mellor

You could go down to the planning office and look at any planning application before they were available on the web. Alot of CoCos have gone to the web now (still available hardcopy from office), so they aren't providing any new info to anyone, its just easier to obtain.
My opinions on the points you made,

I know you feel your plans could be stolen, but the quaility isn't generally good enough. And if somebody was stealing the plans, they would need somebody to "convert" them to make them relevant to their site, even things like surroundings, info and title boxes. If somebody got me to do this as a planning nixer, I wouldnt see the point in printing off the web plans and trying to change, its actually more work for me than doing it from scratch.

as for somebody breaking in, i doubt average dumb criminal would think of it, or understand drawings. If somebody was sophisicated enough to want internal layouts then they would probably rather know whats in each area too, so they would probably visited the house as salesman. Like I said they could get them from the planning office anyway.


One bonus of the files being on the web is that. If anybody objects then you and everybody else can see what the objector says word for word.

muffler

Westford wrote:

Then there's the question of security! The idea of someone breaking into my house, with a full set of internal drawings available to them, is definitely a concern.

Anyone can walk in off the street and buy a hard copy of all your plans and documents so I wouldn't worry too much about them being viewed on a council website.

Its the Dept. Environment who make the rules and regs so the local planning people have no say other than implement what has been put in front of them.

smashey

As far as i'm aware, everything submitted will be published on the web. If somebody wants to break into a house, it isn't like the movies. They will hardly need a set of plans as even a cursory glance at the windows in a house would give a fair indication as to what room lies behind them.

Westford

The "break in" scenario was just an example...and probably not a very good one. In general I was just querying the practice of putting all the planning information up on the web. And asking the question : Is it possible to choose not to have certain documents published to the web.
Mellor...I take your point about the fact that you would need to get the drawings reproduced. However the design is something, which can be the difficult and sometimes costly part, and quality of the djvu files currently available on the planning sites, is certainly high enough to read all dimensions & notations.
Muffler.... Regarding the Dept. Environment making the rules and regs, and the local cc following..... At the moment most (possibly all) of the planning departments are online, and offer several online services, however there only appears to be 2 or 3 which actually publish all planning correspondence to the web for viewing. So I may be wrong, but I don't think this level of direction is coming from the Dept. Env.

smashey

I'm getting the feeling that this is a copyright issue. Why don't you ring the planners in Laois and ask them?

muffler

Westford wrote:

Muffler.... Regarding the Dept. Environment making the rules and regs, and the local cc following..... At the moment most (possibly all) of the planning departments are online, and offer several online services, however there only appears to be 2 or 3 which actually publish all planning correspondence to the web for viewing. So I may be wrong, but I don't think this level of direction is coming from the Dept. Env.

The whole issue is governed by the Planning & Development Act and subsequent regulations. All planning authorities MUST make documents available for inspection and/or purchase by the public. This is all handled by the DOE. Probably about half of the Councils (and Im only guessing here) make the same documents available for inspection online which reduces staff usage although there is no legal obligation to do so.

It is no different than land you have registered with the Land Registry or a company you may own - details are available to whoever wants them.

To answer your question you wont get any hearing from your local planning office in relation to not having your plans etc available online. You can inquire if you wish but the same rules apply to everyone.

I was under the impression that the plans submitted for planning were just to show the planners & the public what the building was going to look like and what it's general dimensions were going to be.
The planners do not need highly detailled construction drawings, well they didn't get any from me, this is what I sent in - along with site layout etc. It was sufficient for planning purposes.

As for copyright infringements, it would be difficult to know if anyone was to build a "facsimile" of your house without scrutionising every new-build for the foreseeable future.

dordali

Same thing happens on Galway County Council website. They are in pdf format and it is possible to save down the files, but you are unable to print them. Which I guess acts as a slight deterrent.