Irishplanningnews.ie

An Bord Pleanala recently had to decide as to whether a proposed weekend music and campervan festival at Bellurgan Park, Bellurgan, Dundalk, County Louth is exempted development.

The festival involved:

•  Family friendly festival aimed at music and campervan/motorhome enthusiasts  to run over a three-day weekend
•  Have maximum capacity for 4,999 persons, with an anticipated 2012 attendance of 3,000 – 3,500 no. persons
•  The site will have three stages; traders; food stalls; a kids’ zone; and hot tubs and showers
•  All structures (marquees etc) will be temporary

Upon initially posing the question to Louth County Council the Council issued a declaration stating that the said matter is development and is not exempted development.

The question was then referred to An Bord Pleanala for consideration.  The Board’s Inspector Read the rest of this entry »

An Bord Pleanala have ruled that Metro North levies should not apply in respect of the redevelopment and extension of the existing service station at the Topaz Airport Service Station, Corballis, County Dublin. Given the levies imposed by Fingal County Council amounted to €364k this is a significant result for the applicant.

The Board considered that having regard to the general purpose of the petrol service station as a motor fuel facility and retail facility associated with the sale of motor fuel within the Dublin Airport Campus, which is to serve the needs of persons using motorised private transport, and the purpose of the Metro North project, which is to provide public transport which may result in the reduction in the demand for private transport, it is considered that Metro North may be a disbenefit to the proposed development as the level of private transport usage would be reduced, with consequent lessening of the demand for fuel in the area.

Furthermore, Read the rest of this entry »

The Government is to appoint a planning regulator following on from the recommendations of the Mahon tribunal. The regulator’s role will primarily involve assessing forward planning functions by local authorities including independent assessment of city and county development plans and regional planning guidelines. The final decision on whether to issue a direction to any local authority will rest with the Minister. The office of the regulator’s will be staffed by personnel taken on secondment or on a permanent basis from An Bord Pleanála. Given the level of detail that is often involved in the assessment of a minor residential extension it always came across as extremely odd that large areas of land could be zoned or dezoned without any independent analysis.  The zoning of land is the most critical area of planning, with everything else flowing from this initial decision.  As such the appointment of a regulator’s office makes sense.

A consolidated version of planning regulations from 2001 – 2012 is now available on the Department of Environment website.  This should make life much easier for practitioners due to the myriad of regulations which have been introduced over the past 12 years resulting in a myriad of different documents.

A link to the consolidated regulations on the DoECLG website  is provided below:

http://www.environ.ie/en/DevelopmentHousing/PlanningDevelopment/Planning/PlanningLegislation-Overview/PlanningRegulations/