April 2009
Monthly Archive
Gerry Reynolds and Planning Law
Posted by info on 24 Apr 2009 | Tagged as: Campaign, Environment
Where's the builder?
Cllr. Gerry Reynolds (FG) seems to be getting himself in an awful twist about planning law.
In a statement issued to the papers a number of weeks back, Cllr. Reynolds claimed that Local Authorities are prevented by law from taking action on unfinished housing estates for 12 years after the developer has been granted planning permission.
I pointed out in a subsequent statement that this was nonsense. Section 34 of the Planning and Development Act, 2000 allows a Local Authority to require that an estate is finished with a certain time frame, provided that this time frame is at least 2 years from when works are commenced.
If this time frames elapses and the estate is not finished, the Local Authority can issue warning and enforcement notices to the developer, and ultimately use any security lodged by the developer to ensure the estate is finished.
Cllr. Reynolds then issued another statement saying that while this was factually correct, it did not make a difference, as this only related to ‘withering permissions and social and affordable housing’.
This is more nonsense.
A ‘ withering permission’ is a permission that is granted under a planning act that is still valid despite the planning act having been repealed to make way for a new act. Specific measures are normally included in new planning acts to deal with such permission, in order to prevent developers rushing through development before new regulations come into force. This was a particular issue in relation to Social and Affordable Housing, in that the rules on Social and Affordable Housing were significantly changed between the Planning and Development Act, 2000 and the Planning and Development (Amendment) Act, 2002.
What any of this has to do with unfinished housing estates, Cllr. Reynolds will have to explain.
Maybe he’ll provide an update on his website soon.
