Clare planners to amend rules for one-off houses

Pressure from councillors to ease restrictions on building one-off homes in Co Clare has forced planners to agree to further amend the Clare County Development Plan.

At a special council meeting yesterday, councillors called for further easing of restrictions.

County manager Alec Fleming responded by saying he would draw up proposals to amend part of the council's rules relating to allowing locals to build one-off homes.

Councillors claimed current restrictions were too restrictive and prevented locals from building in their own areas.

Councillors already moved in September to dismantle their "locals-only" policy when they unanimously passed two motions against the advice of management to amend the plan to make it easier for applicants to build one-off homes.

In the existing plan, adopted in February of last year, the council sought to control the proliferation of one-off homes in large areas of Clare by imposing a general ban on non-locals from building homes.

At the meeting, the council's senior planner denied an arrangement between the planning department and a select group of architects.

Liam Conneally said: "There is no cosy relationship or cosy cartel with these architects. The Agents Liaison Group (ALG) was introduced to improve lines of communication, but it will have to take a different format and be more representative of the agents operating in the county."

In a letter, the architects said they "are totally frustrated by lack of consistency, poor management structure, lack of productive dialogue, poor communication and absence of a rational coherent, consistent and common sense approach to planning within the council".

The group saw little point in holding any further meetings with the planning department "until there has been a significant and tangible overhaul of the present system, which, in our view, is clearly not working".

Mr Fleming said the council's director for planning, Bernadette Kinsella, would discuss the situation with the architects.