Review of local authority planning processes announced 22/6

FLCP

Morning,
I am in one of the councils affected by the announced review and am interested in opinions from boardsies. Do you think the review will focus on certain areas/issues like commercial development/ghost estates or one off houses? What impact are these reviews likely to have on applications in process and those about to be submitted?
Should those of us looking to build in these areas be worried?
Thanks
FLCP

sydthebeat

one thing you can be guaranteed is that the review needs to justify itself, so it WILL find issues with every local authority under review.

the scale of these issues shall be small in my opinion... more along the lines of inadequate staffing to handle workload during boom etc.

with the "downturn" (arse falling out) of the construction industry authorities have more staff and time to deal with what might have been lesser issues, or issues they would condition. Now they are looking for intricate details and specific uses during the process. A sceptic may think this is just to keep their workloads full in order to retain their jobs!!!

Poor Uncle Tom

The Department of the Environment have got many complaints about inconsistencies in decisions being made by LA's planning departments, and incongruencies between decisions made and policies of particular development plans, down through the years. Why are they suddenly taking issue with some complaints now?

Some may see that the Department are attempting to secure their jobs by using this as a springboard to usher in entirely new planning legislation under the guise of 'needed reform' found during their inspection of various LA's decision making processes.

Bitten & Hisses

sydthebeat wrote: »

A sceptic may think this is just to keep their workloads full in order to retain their jobs!!!

That sceptic might say something similar about the remarkable increase in requests for FI in the last two years.

beyondpassive

Its a power play. John Gormely needs to get control of the mandarins in his department. They are very old school and entrenched. Moreover with regional guidelines becoming mandatory with the new planning bill, The Dohelg needs to show the independent fiefdoms that are our councils who's boss. Look at the Mayo councillors who tried to give carte blanche to one off housing in the county, they tried to railroad their plan through despite the protests of the Minister. The second underlying issue is that irelands needs to transpose the Water framework and Habitats directives correctly. The net result of this will be that any developement which could have a potential effect on a designated habitat (read this as within 15km of a river or lake) will need to adequatly assess the impact on the environment. Europe has fined the UK for this and Ireland also faces fines. This will mean that every one off house will need an EIS which assesses the environmental impact and proposes mitigating factors. The third factor will be the need for councils to fairly dezone land by applying order of priority without resorting to bias towards looking after the vested interests who look after FF and FG. Who knows we might get a planning sytem out of this. We might stop the flight of the middle class from our dying towns turning the hedgerows of our country lanes into a crass dispearsed suburbia, putting huge strain on the delivery of services and weakening our urban structure.

So build now.

No6

While dealing with various planners in various planning authorities around the contry over the years I have frequently been referd to various buildings both rural and urban as being good examples of what they the local authority (read individual planner) would like to see in the area and new developments should try to mimic these. My answer for this is they were all built prior to 1963 therefore the best thing they could do is scrap the planning system totally, we managed without it up to 1963 and all it seems to have done is try to restrict thereby adding value to certain types of developments in certain areas leading the the enrichment of a small element of the population at the expense of the majority!!

Now review over who do I send the bill to!!:D