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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
68 — village July - August 2012
Two-off
Clientelism means
councillors pressure
management to grant
permissions
ANTON!McCABE
P
LANNING i n t he North suffers many of the
same problems as that in the Republic: an
excessive number of one-off houses in
the countryside, political interference,
and deference to vested interests. Although the
North has been spared the depredations of the
Republic’s boomtown lack of planning, one aspect
of Northern planning is worse than the Republic’s.
There is no right of third-party appeal, as there is
in the South to An Bord Pleanála. However, on the
other hand the developer has the right to appeal a
refusal, to the Planning Appeals Commission.
Northern planners regularly permit more
one-off houses in the countryside than England,
Scotland and Wales combined, despite the fact
that the North has an area of 5,345 square miles
while the other three countries comprise 88,744
square miles. According to the North’s Planning
Service, 95% of applications for new single dwell-
ings in rural areas were approved in the last year
for which statistics are available (2010-11).
That was very significantly higher than the 81%
approval rate for new single dwellings in urban
areas.
As in the Republic, many of these rural dwell-
ers are commuters who have no involvement with
the area, except to sleep in it.
The North’s Planning Service is centralised and
covers all 26 district council areas. It is an execu-
tive within the Department of the Environment.
Äò®ÙÊÄÃÄã
69
The current 26 councils are to be replaced by
11 larger councils. Planning powers are to be
devolved to these.
Officially, councils do not have any planning
powers. Their role is consultative. In practice,
councillors put pressure on planners - usually in
favour of development.
The North’s political culture is very pro-devel-
opment. This can be seen in the fate of Planning
Policy Statement 14, introduced in 2006 under
Direct Rule: it restricted development in the
countryside. Within 18 months of devolution
returning, the Executive overturned it with PPS 21
‘Sustainable Development in the Countryside’.
Village has spoken to a former planner, who
worked for over 30 years with Planning Service.
He said that his experience was that senior man-
agement yielded too often to political pressure
and permitted development. “When they were
put under pressure, they just gave way”, he said.
Much of the countryside around most of the
North’s larger towns is “like a low-density subur-
ban development”.
“I would say that if a particular councillor or
group of councillors put on enough pressure, then
Planning Service would give way”, the retired plan-
ner said. Paradoxically, he considered many of the
same councillors disliked how excessive develop-
ment had changed the countryside.
The former planner had experience of wishing
to uphold proper planning and being told to back
off by management. On one occasion he was deal-
ing with an application for a house in the
Sperrins’ Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
“I was looking for a better design, and the devel-
oper, the person building the house, got on to my
principal, and my principal called me in and said
‘lay off’”, he said.
Under pressure, planners have permitted
suburban-type developments in the countryside.
They often did not insist on conditions such as
planting tree so houses integrated with their sur-
roundings. Even where conditions were imposed,
this was not followed up. Enforcement was lax and
under-resourced. It
was “the poor relation,
there was very little
done”. Often new builds
were not inspected,
thus conditions of the
grant of permission not
enforced.
Once Planning
Policy Statement 21
was adopted “the sta-
ble door was opened,
and I don’t think there
is very much more that
can be done”. It speaks
about not allowing
development on sky-
lines “but you can see
sites that never should
have been developed because they’re skyline sites.
There was a presumption that a house in the coun-
tryside would be granted, and that is what has
happened”.
Planning Service management would not
stand up for proper planning. Planners would
recommend rejection of a development.
However, if management thought the devel-
oper would appeal to the Planning Appeals
Commission, and had a chance of winning, they
would overturn the refusal and grant permis-
sion. This was for operational reasons: “The
time that’s involved in preparing a defence to a
planning appeal is considerable. For the sake of
a principle, I don’t think management would stick
its neck out”.
As a planner, he personally experienced the
disproportionate strength of developers: “The
pro-development lobby is better organised than
the conservation lobby. The conservation lobby
could bite the heels of the planners, but the devel-
opment lobby could put megabucks on the table.
Not for the planners. They could show the number
of people that were going to be employed as the
result of a development. Politically that speaks
volumes”.
In 2002 there were 358,000 one-off dwell-
ings in the State. In 2011 there are 410,000,
52,000 more.
There is no
right of third-
party appeal,
as there is
in the South
to An Bord
Pleanála
¨
