Sir, – There has been recent major legislative change in relation to housing where planning applications consisting of over 100 units will no longer be regarded as strategic housing developments (SHDs) going straight to An Bord Pleanála for approval, but instead will be regarded as large-scale residential developments (LRDs) sent in the first instance to city and county councils for consideration.
Over the past number of years, it has become standard for material contraventions (where an application is said to be in some part not materially consistent with a local development plan determined by councillors) to be recorded within SHD applications and in fact the associated legislation required a statement from developers to justify such a contravention.
The latest legislation associated with LRD applications significantly changes the expectation regarding the making of material contravention statements and instead it should be regarded as a best practice that where a material contravention is considered likely to be evident within such an application (such as through an opinion expressed in preparatory planning meetings by a member of local authority staff), that it be duly recorded in the application’s statement of consistency.
This is of potentially major significance as the change associated with LRD legislation whereby applications with identified material contraventions are adjudicated upon first by local authorities would appear to mean that a largely dormant power held by councillors as per Section 34 (6) of the Planning and Development Act could be triggered which would necessitate a vote of councillors in order for any application with a material contravention to be approved.
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Furthermore, for such approval to be granted, a simple majority would not be sufficient as in fact an absolute majority of three-quarters of the total number of councillors within a local authority would be required.
The prospect of councillors regularly being asked to vote upon approval of private residential applications would represent a drastic, unanticipated change from the norm and the absolute majority bar would be exceptionally high in a context where councillors would be asked whether to vote to approve a material contravention deemed inconsistent with their own development plan.
It would not be an understatement to indicate that if any LRD application presented contains an obvious material contravention then the prospect of approval at local authority stage could be approaching nil.
In order to avoid a vote of councillors, developers would need to make sure they properly respect the new performance-based criteria for determination of material contraventions (which ought to prevent for example new eight-storey buildings being built directly adjacent to two-storey houses) and avoid including any material contraventions accordingly, which have in any case been a major source of contentiousness generally with nearby residents whenever they arose in SHD applications. – Yours, etc,
Cllr JOHN KENNEDY,
(Fine Gael),
Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council Offices,
Dún Laoghaire,
Co Dublin.