PLANNERS in the county are to conduct a review of the planning regulations after An Bord Pleannala overturned two recent decisions made by the authority and instead, gave applicants to go-ahead to build houses. A meeting of the Planning and Development committee of the council heard that the two unconnected applications for one-off houses were refused by the county council only to be granted on appeal to An Bord Pleannala.
Cllr Kevin Sheehan (FF) said that he wanted to see the reports from the planning appeal to see what reasons the board gave for overturning a decision by the local authority. “This could require serious amendments to our development plan,” he told the meeting
Cllr Liam Galvin (FG) said that it “if planning permission is being granted on appeal then we really need to look at that”.
Director of services , Tom Enright told the meeting the planning department is currently “conducting a review of all decision which were appealed in the last twelve months and we can bring a report on that to the members. We have quite a good record with Bord Pleannala upholding our decisions on one-off housing in about 85 per cent of appeals”.
The committee was told that the number of applications currently coming in to the planning office is tiny when compared to the boom times.
The committee agreed that a special meeting would be held to hear the results of the review once the planning department had completed it.
