THERE is a joke that planners endure which goes as follows. A doctor, a civil engineer and a planner argue about which profession is the oldest.
The doctor says that God created Eve from Adam’s rib, a procedure requiring surgery which makes his profession the oldest.
The engineer counters that before making humans, God created order from chaos - certainly the most ambitious civil engineering project ever and proof his profession is oldest.
The planner leans back in his chair and smiles smugly. Ah yes, he says, but who do you think created the chaos?
Actually, there are many jokes of a similar ilk — that’s just one of the kinder ones. Planners, the system they work in and the decisions it produces make for endless fuel for outrage.
Whether you’re a motorist disappearing in a cloud of exhaust fumes in a tailback stretching further than the eye can see, and the patience can tolerate, an eco-warrior facing down a JCB while tethered to a tree or a farmer in a forgotten village bereft of new life and development, the planning system seems ripe for criticism.
Ten years of revelations from the Planning Tribunal have not helped, serving only to reinforce the suspicion that the system was never robust enough to withstand the self-interested interference of developers and the public representatives they lobbied.
If the revelations had come at a calmer time, lessons might have been learned. But the 10 years of Flood and Mahon also coincided with the biggest, fastest and most lucrative building boom in our history.
While one set of weaknesses and failures was being highlighted in Dublin Castle, a whole new set was being discovered in every local authority across the country.
The result? Urban sprawl from the cities, commuting times multiplied, lack of school places and public transport, damage to properties built on flood plains, low water pressure in estates added to already strained mains pipes, apartment blocks without soundproofing, estates without green spaces, villages turned into towns without amenities to match and main streets drained of commerce by middle-of-nowhere malls and retail parks.
Combine that with complaints of inconsistent application of planning guidelines, subjective decision-making, unreasonable delays and burdensome bureaucracy, and Irish planning sounds irredeemable.
But is it really all that bad? And should the blame for faults and flaws lie solely with the system and the planners who operate within it?
Andrew Hind, a senior planner with Cork County Council, is also president of the Planning Institute of Ireland and speaks here in that role.
“We think we have a good planning system at the moment although there may be aspects of it that maybe need to be adapted and strengthened to meet the burdens placed on it,” he says.
He does have criticisms, however, and they begin with the country’s overall blueprint for planning, the National Spatial Strategy. Published in 2002, the document set out the places, policies and procedures for development in a manner meant to address the imbalances created by the explosion in building.
The Spatial Strategy was to be implemented through regional planning guidelines which were to be implemented by the often forgotten regional authorities - super-councils set up to make neighbouring county councils co-operate for joined-up regional development. But regional authorities don’t have planning staff. They have to second planners from local authorities to draw up guidelines which local authorities are under no legal obligation to comply with.
“The National Spatial Strategy is quite a forward-thinking document,” Hind says, “but it falls on the regional authorities to make it happen and there is this missing link between them and the local authorities which actually make the decisions.”
Ian Lumley, heritage officer with An Taisce, the only organisation to enjoy a statutory consultative role in sensitive planning applications, sees another missing link - Government.
“The Government ignored their own National Spatial Strategy in their decentralisation plan so while it might have been a good piece of work, no-one in authority is taking it seriously.”
Without any real influence, the spatial strategy and regional guidelines give way to the county development plan, probably the most controversial document a county council will ever produce.
It was the melee over the drafting of the 1993 Dublin county plan and all the horse-trading and brown envelope swapping that went on over land rezoning then that ultimately led to the Planning Tribunal.
The brown envelopes may have disappeared but the appetite for rezoning hasn’t. As environment minister in 2006, Dick Roche overturned extensive rezonings in the Laois county development plan.
Enough land was already zoned to cater for 15 years growth yet the extra rezoning would have opened up 24 villages to massive residential development. Last summer, Monaghan’s development plan fell foul of Roche’s successor, John Gormley. Monaghan was attempting to rezone enough land to allow a doubling of the county’s population over the six-year life of the development plan, again without jobs, amenities and infrastructure to match.
So how could it happen that such an important document could wander so far off course in ignoring the governing principles of good planning? Andrew Hind lays a lot of the blame at the door of misguided councillors. “What’s wrong with our system is not the fact that elected members are involved because this is a democratic system, but there needs to be some mechanism for review at the end of the plan-making process where some independent body would automatically review the plan and intervene where there is an aspect that causes concern and amend that aspect.”
But are councillors simply misguided or should the accusation be more serious? An investigation by RTÉ’s Prime Time programme last November revealed some startling statistics about the involvement of elected representatives in the land, development and property business.
A total of 22% of councillors deal in or develop land through their day jobs as estate agents, landowners and builders. In Mayo, that figure rose as high as 45%, in Offaly it was 44% and in eight other counties it was 33% or more.
Such information should be held by the Standards in Public Office Commission which keeps records of politicians’ assets and business interests so that it can be seen where a conflict of interest might arise but it is up to the individual to make an annual declaration to the commission and the data is not independently verified.
Prime Time found that in Clare, if the declarations are to be believed, 97% of elected members have no beneficial interest even in their family home. In ten counties, two-thirds or more of the councillors have not declared an interest in the family home.
One contributor to the programme, planning consultant Paul McTernan, claimed some councillors who were auctioneers rezoned agricultural land then sold it at the newly inflated development land price.
With such incomplete declarations to SIPO, however, the question of who benefits from which transaction is often a matter of rumour and speculation rather than fact.
According to Ian Lumley, the SIPO files aren’t the only incomplete paperwork. “There are massive undocumented verbal representations made by councillors. In Denmark if a councillor intervened behind the scenes to influence a planning or rezoning decision it would be considered corruption - a criminal offence - but here it’s the norm.”
Lumley says An Taisce regularly receives calls from politicians trying to get the organisation to withdraw objections. Most calls are from councillors but even Government ministers have tried their luck.
“It’s very intimidating to have a politician on to you feeding you a sob story about an applicant and without any documentation to support what they say or to make their representation official.
“It’s a weekly occurrence for us [in head office] but at local level it’s daily. It’s not just us they call - councillors will be ringing the professional planning staff and council management too, again without any record of their interference.
“We find a lot of grievances out there about why did I get refused permission and so and so got it? Political interference is the answer - wholesale interference by telephone and verbally - pushing all the time to get a favourable result.”
Applicants often have other grievances, not least of which is the role of An Taisce itself. The organisation is unique in that it must be notified by local authorities of any planning application relating to an area of natural beauty, environmental sensitivity or historical value.
This notification gives the organisation a chance to raise objections to developments that might otherwise slip by unnoticed. But applicants who have come up against the group often complain of the seemingly arbitrary way that their case came to light, of the difficulties of finding out exactly who in the local An Taisce committee has a difficulty with their plan and of the organisation’s alleged preoccupation with past heritage over present humanity.
Lumley is unapologetic about the organisation’s privileged position but says he would be happy to share the role with other groups with specialist interests such as wildlife or architecture as is the case in Britain.
He doesn’t accept accusations of secrecy, however. “Cases are notified to head office and submissions are made through here because in many cases local An Taisce members have been threatened and abused.”
There have been no recorded cases of physical assault and no incidents have been reported to gardaí but Lumley says members must be protected. “We encourage them (applicants) to talk to us through our Dublin office. We will reply to any issues they raise.”
In practice, however, that’s a tall order. An Taisce is a trust that relies on fees from its membership of 5,000 for income and it receives around 14,000 notifications a year.
As for the allegation of putting historical legacy before current day needs, that’s a matter of opinion, Lumley says. Many of those who back An Taisce’s stand against the routing of the M3 motorway close to the Hill of Tara, for example, will argue that the organisation has its priorities just right.
Many ordinary planning applicants and objectors manage to avoid entanglement with An Taisce and the intricacies of planning policy papers, but that doesn’t always spare them frustration in dealing with the planning system.
The Ombudsman is asked to investigate over 250 complaints a year relating to planning applications but the office is strictly limited in what it can probe and many complaints must be turned away at the door.
“We are limited to enforcement and administration. We can not look at a decision to grant or refuse planning permission,” senior investigator Maureen Behan explains.
Neither have they any function in investigating grievances against An Bord Pleanála. Where they do have a role is in how a planning application is processed and in the way decisions are executed.
“Let’s say there is a decision to grant permission and there are conditions and a year or so later, some conditions are not complied with. A person can complain that a local authority is not enforcing those conditions.
“A very typical complaint that we would handle is where a person who objected to an application was not notified of a decision to grant permission and lost their right to appeal to an Bord Pleanála because they missed the four-week deadline. The Ombudsman takes that breach very seriously.”
In almost all cases, the Ombudsman rules in favour of the complainant, usually recommending the local authority pay a financial redress somewhere between €1,000 and €3,500.
With over 90,000 planning applications lodged annually in recent years, there are bound to bound to be complaints but Andrew Hind believes in most cases, planners get it right.
“The system has been under enormous stress because of the quantity of development and pressure for development but all of us who are inside the system see examples of people taking work home at weekends and doing site visits on Sundays.
“That’s because of their commitment to do their job properly. I think the quality of decisions made is very good. Everybody sees decisions they personally do not agree with but you can’t always allow what suits an individual person.”
Much was done over the past decade to try to address delays in the system — there were 250 local authority planners ten years ago and around 600 now. But the massive growth in building over the same period reduced much of the gains.
“Also the complexity and scale of planning applications has increased - with a big development you almost need an entire room to store the documents for the EIS (environmental impact statement),” Mr Hind says.
One criticism sometimes muttered about planners is that too many are from outside Ireland. “I think it’s grossly unfair but there have been unpleasant remarks,” says Mr Hind, who is himself British born.
“One of the things planners are trained in is being able to quickly assimilate and understand the culture and traditions of a particular area and the elements of that culture and tradition that are relevant to the planning of that area. That’s why we are professionals.”
He also points out that the appeals system here is more generous than in many other European countries as appeals can be made not only by the applicant and an objector directly affected by a proposed development but also by any other individual.
“Somebody who exercises their right to appeal ought to do so responsibly with reasonable grounds. If there were to be frivolous appeals — and I’m not saying that is a problem or trend — you could make some provision for the award of costs for wasting people’s time. There would be ways of controlling it without necessarily taking the right away.”
With the economy and the construction industry slowing, the planning system may get some breathing space this year but Mr Hind says the time could be put to good use.
“If the boom dies down there would be more time to focus on improvements such as the pre-application process.
“It’s something that gets sacrificed under pressure to meet deadlines but it could be used better to raise issues and to have problems addressed before an application goes in.
“If we are to achieve consensus, or at least greater consensus about planning, then more dialogue is needed. We’re all affected by planning so that’s ideally what we want - consensus not conflict.”
THE QUIRKS
PLANNING rules may seem uniformly comprehensive and dour but there are some exemptions and oddities. For example:
* You can you can only keep a boat, caravan or campervan in your garden for nine months of the year. Any longer than that and you need permission.
* Neither can you keep a for sale or let sign up for more than seven days after sale or letting without permission. You can however, build a house extension to a certain size without permission so long as it doesn’t reduce your garden or yard to less than 25 square metres.
* If you want to put a second satellite dish on your roof or attach it to the front of your house, you need permission. Keep it to one side and keep it out of sight and then you may be ok.
* You can build a wall no more than 1.2 metres high at the front of your house or two metres high at the side or rear without bothering a planning officer but a security fence needs permission.
* You can build a shed for domestic pets — which because of a loose definition could probably be stretched to mean a pet tiger — but not one for pigeons.
* There is no legal requirement to notify neighbours of an exempted development although displaying manners rather than copies of the planning acts is generally considered a better approach.
* You can build an extension to your home of up to 40 sq m without permission but if it is a barn for livestock or bloodstock, the exemption shoots up to 200 sq m.
* Even better, you can erect a 300 sq m barn, store or shed for agricultural purposes that don’t involve animals.
* There have been cases of individuals refused permission for houses who have simply built a barn and lived in it instead, although that’s not quite what planners have in mind when they think of barn conversions.
THE MYTHS
*Local authorities ignore the advice of planners:
Only 612 of 80,029 decisions made last year were contrary to the recommendation of the planner on the case — just one in 130 or 0.7% of all cases. A planner’s recommendation is most likely to be rejected in the case of houses, extensions or alterations, and industrial or commercial buildings rather than big infrastructure developments. At appeal level, however, the story is quite different. An Bord Pleanála last year rejected its own planning inspectors’ recommendations in 13.6% of cases.
* We’re a nation of NIMBYs:
Despite the unprecedented surge in development, the appeal rate has not changed. Around one in 14 or 7% of applications are appealed to An Bord Pleanála and that has remained static for years.
*Planning is a money-making racket:
More than €57 million was received in application fees last year but that was stretched across more than 90,000 applications. Development levies (imposed to cover the need for public lighting, footpaths, drainage etc) the development will create, are a more lucrative source of revenue. The take increased 100-fold over the past 20 years. In the past 10 years, total levies increased from €58m to €671m.
* No one is ever jailed for bad planning:
True, but you can get into trouble for unauthorised development which means a development that either has no permission or differs from the development granted permission in aspect or conditions. A total of 3,411 enforcement actions were taken in 2006, although there were only 213 convictions. Local authorities also applied to the courts for 132 injunctions but just 32 were granted.
* We’re overrun by planners:
There were 1,797 staff employed in planning in local authorities in 2006 but only 573 of them were actually planners. The rest were administrative, technical or legal staff or associated professionals. There are around 1,000 professional planners in Ireland but about 400 of them work in private practice and as consultants.
* There is a compo-culture in the planning system:
The perception that developers regularly get pay-outs for being refused permission for a development on land zoned for that kind of development isn’t borne out by the statistics. There was one claim for compensation in 2006 and the sum sought was €450,000. Nothing has been paid out so far. Nine claims totalling €42m were made in 2000 and nothing has been paid out there either. In 2002, €28.6m in claims was paid out and the same year €381,000 was paid out to one claimant.
PLANNING TENSION
WOOD QUAY
One of the first planning controversies to attract huge public interest was Dublin Corporation’s plan to build its headquarters at Wood Quay on the banks of the river Liffey.
A protracted battle raged in the 1970s when the site was discovered to be a Viking settlement, complete with medieval city walls and countless artefacts which members of the public helped themselves to when they were tossed in spoil heaps during haphazard excavations.
At one stage 20,000 people marched in protest but eventually the Supreme Court ruled that building could proceed. The incident is still a source of anger among conservationists today, although its legacy was to ensure that all future planning decisions were to take archeology into account.
BALLYMUN
Hailed as a new era in modern living when the building of the Ballymun flats in Dublin began in the 1960s, the planners soon realised they had replaced the tenement slums of the city centre with tenement tower blocks in the suburbs.
Located without shops, buses, personal space, jobs and other amenities, they became riddled with social problems.
Now under complete redevelopment, most of the towers have been demolished and are being replaced with houses, duplexes and low-rise apartments with a street-based layout and amenities scattered throughout.
M3 MOTORWAY
The decision to build a much-needed new motorway between Dublin and the commuter town of Navan was warmly welcomed — until the route was shown to be skirting the Hill of Tara.
The ensuing row over the last couple of years has attracted international attention from academics, historians and environmentalists because of Tara’s reputation as the seat of Ireland’s High Kings and its links with St Patrick.
Costly court cases have been taken and the matter is before Europe but construction is to press ahead despite the wealth of archeological finds being turned up in excavations.
INCINERATORS
Opposed by huge numbers of the public wherever they are proposed, incinerators have nonetheless been given planning permission in Cork, Meath and Ringsend, Dublin.
Meath is expected to be the first one, operational by 2010 with Ringaskiddy, Cork to follow although opponents are still hopeful of intervention by the High Court.
The Ringsend incinerator, granted permission last month, is a particular awkward one for the Government given that it is in the constituency of Environment Minister and anti-incinerator advocate John Gormley.
APPLICATIONS
IN THE early 1990s before the construction boom, the number of planning applications hovered above the 40,000 mark but in the 10 years from 1997 to 2006 inclusive, the numbers increased rapidly.
There were 55,929 applications in 1997, a record in itself, but the records continued to be broken so that in 2006 — the last full year for which data is available, applicants made an all-time high of 92,651 applications. That’s a 10 year rise of 66%.
The most numerous class of application is categorised simply as “dwellings”. There were almost 47,000 such applications in 2006, covering single houses, estates, apartments and holiday homes. The number of dwellings built in recent years has been around 80,000 annually.
The next most common application was for extensions and alterations at 21,204.
REFUSALS
WHILE the rise in application numbers over the past decade is striking, even more so is the trend in refusal rates which almost doubled over the same period. One in 10 applications was refused in 1996 but that had risen steadily to almost one in five in 2006.
In Wexford, almost one in three applications were refused (31.5%) but in Sligo only one in 12 (8.5%) met the same fate. The lowest refusal rates were in Sligo, Tipperary North, Limerick and Mayo.
The highest were in Wexford, Galway, Meath, Donegal and Westmeath.
APPEALS
THE appeals rate has remained constant at about 7% every year since the early 1990s but again there are big variations from area to area. In Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown, for example, 16.2% of all decisions were appealed compared with just 1.6% in Monaghan.
A clear trend emerged in 2006 with appeal rates highest in the five city councils of Cork, Dublin, Galway, Limerick and Waterford as well as the three Dublin county councils of South Dublin, Fingal and Dun Laoghaire Rathdown, all at 12% or above.
Monaghan, Longford, Donegal, Cavan, Carlow Galway, Laois, Roscommon, Sligo and Wexford all had appeal rates of below 5%.
Once an appeal comes before An Bord Pleanála, the local authority decision is more likely to be upheld or varied than reversed. In 1997, 42.5% of local authority decisions were upheld and a further 34.5% were varied while just 23% were reversed.
Proportionately, the outcomes were similar 10 years later. Just over 34% of decisions were upheld last year while 33% were varied and 32.8% were overturned.
Irish Examiner
www.buckplanning.ie
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