RIAI requests answers to ‘bizarre’ planning decisions
Irish Independent Wednesday November 17th 2004.

By Con Power

The Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland (RIAI) has presented a detailed dossier of “bizarre” planning invalidations to the new Minister for the Environment and Local Government, Dick Roche.

The Institute’s president, Tony Reddy, said yesterday that the inconsistencies in the planning system, like the ones highlighted in this dossier, are causing frustration and alienation among building professionals and ordinary people alike, as well as imposing unnecessary extra financial costs.

In this context, Mr. Reddy has called for an urgent meeting with the Minister to discuss proposals it has submitted to his department for a national planning charter to ensure a transparent approach to planning right across the country and consistent high standards.

Mr. Reddy set out some of the “bizarre” planning invalidations forwarded by RIAI members from all around the country over recent weeks and contained in the dossier forwarded to the Minister.

These include:

• An amended and re-lodged application invalidated by a city council because the site notice was the wrong colour – they were told it should have been yellow. A yellow notice was then erected and the application was re-lodged and again it was rejected because the site notice was the wrong colour even though it was the colour requested – the council had changed its mind on the colour issue. After another notice was erected the application was validated.
  
• A planning application invalidated by the same council because the word “dimension” was not written after each dimension in the drawings submitted.
  
• A county council invalidated an application because the site concerned was surrounded by a red line and not a blue line on the plans submitted. By law, a blue line is required to distinguish a site from other adjacent land owned by the same applicant. However, in this case the client did not own any such land, but the official still insisted that a blue line be drawn immediately outside the red line on the map.
  
• A large city council invalidated an application for not showing internal room dimensions in an existing building for rooms which were not changed in any way.
  
• An application to a county council was invalidated because a fee was not submitted even though the fee had been paid electronically and the remittance advice was submitted to show this.
  
• The use of an out-of-date application form was the reason for an invalidation by one county council, even though the form was taken from the counter in the council’s own offices.

The RIAI president said that ordinary people are ultimately the ones who are paying the additional financial costs and suffering the delays caused by ongoing problems in the planning system.

Unacceptable practices
“Many local authorities provide a very effective planning service and are clearly striving towards high standards,” Mr. Reddy commented. “Some of the examples of this good work include the Cork Rural Housing Design Guidelines and a number of the local area plans in Dublin such as those for Ballymun, Pelletstown, Dublin Docklands and Heuston Station. However, there are still unacceptable practices in quite a number of areas.

“Despite the fact that we have one piece of planning legislation, there are considerable variations in the way the legislation is being interpreted from one local authority to another.

" Different criteria are being set for basic requirements such as site notices and advertisements of planning applications in newspapers. This lack of consistency is wasting the resources of ordinary people who have lodged planning applications as well as that of the local authorities themselves.”

To address these inconsistencies, Mr. Reddy explained that the RIAI has called for a national planning charter which would clearly set out the rights and responsibilities of planning applicants, their advisors and local authorities, as well as highlighting practical examples of good and bad practice in planning.

In addition, Mr. Reddy said that because there is no forum where planning practices can be monitored, commented on, or changed, other than through the extremely expensive option of the courts, the RIAI has also called for a national planning monitoring forum.

“Such a forum would oversee the implementation of the charter, as well as Government policies and guidelines in the planning area,” the president added.

“It would also advise the Minister on the problems and issues being identified by users of the planning system and monitor the performance standards of planning authorities as identified in their annual reports.”