Wexford): I am pleased to have this opportunity to inform Senators of the steps that have been taken, through the Local Government (Planning and Development) Regulations, 1994, to streamline and update subordinate planning legislation. The various changes made and the new provisions introduced by these regulations are progressive in character. They will facilitate the more effective operation of the planning process while making it more open and understandable for people generally.
The technical and administrative detail of our planning system is spelt out in regulations under the Planning Acts. It is to the regulations that one must look, for example, to find out what the requirements are for making a planning application, the fee for an application, which development is exempt from planning permission requirements, and so on. The basic regulations, before the 1994 regulations, dated from 1977 but have been amended on numerous occasions since then. The result was that no fewer than 19 separate sets of regulations were in force. It is unnecessary to say that this made matters very complicated and laborious.
The time had come to clarify and rationalise the position and the new regulations do so. It was decided, however, that it would not be enough simply to draw the existing provisions together in a single document, however beneficial such an exercise would be. Experience since 1977 had shown that there were quite a number of provisions requiring modification or improvement. For this reason the new regulations contain the amendments that were considered appropriate in light of experience over the years. They also cover some new areas as a follow-up to recent planning legislation.
To put matters in perspective, all Parts of the regulations, except Parts X and XIII, correspond, with modifications and additions, to provisions of the previous regulations. Parts X, dealing with development by local authorities, and XIII, dealing with development by Government Departments and the Office of Public Works, are new; the necessary enabling powers for these Parts were enacted in the Local Government (Planning and Development) Act, 1993.
The regulations are concerned in large part with minor or technical matters. I will not, therefore, go through each article and give details of every change made. However, I will highlight the more important issues, with particular reference to the new provisions relating to development by local authorities and State authorities, the new public notice arrangements and the alterations made in the categories of development which are exempted from planning permission requirements.
Part X of the regulations is totally new and deals with development by local authorities. This Part sets out a procedure of public notice and participation for proposed development, which leads to the preparation by officials of a report on the proposal for submission to the elected members of the local authority. Development that a local authority carries out in its own functional area does not require planning permission because it would be impractical to require an authority to apply to itself for permission. While some local authority development is subject to public notice and comment, through environmental impact assessment procedures, most local authority development proposals have not until now been governed by formal procedures for public information and participation.
Part X of the new regulations effects a fundamental change on this front by applying a new procedure of notice and participation to a wide range of local authority development. The procedure will apply, for example, to the construction of houses, waste water treatment works, burial grounds, landfill sites, fire stations, etc. The new procedure requires an authority to publish newspaper notice of a development proposal and to give details of the proposal to specified bodies. Documents and plans detailing the proposed development must be made available for public inspection and a period of at least a month will be allowed for the public and interested bodies to make submissions.
When the period for making submissions is over, the officials of the local authority will prepare a report on the proposal. This report will include a summary of the points made in submissions, give the local authority's response to the issues raised and indicate whether it is proposed to proceed with the development. The report will be submitted to the elected members of the local authority and it will be open to the members, if they consider it appropriate, to exercise their power under section 3 of the City and County Management (Amendment) Act, 1955, to direct the manager not to proceed with the proposal.
The principal advantage of the new procedure is that it will lead to greater accountability in relation to local authority development. We should not underestimate the significance of the change in terms of the increased public involvement that it will bring about.
Part XIII of the regulations is also entirely new and is concerned with certain development by Government Departments and the Office of Public Works, to whom I will refer from now on as "State authorities". As Senators will recall, there was a general understanding before last year that development by State authorities did not need planning permission and was governed only by the consultation requirements of section 84 of the 1963 Planning Act. Following the Supreme Court's ruling in the Mullaghmore and Luggala cases last year that development by State authorities needs planning permission, the Local Government (Planning and Development) Act, 1993, regularised the position of development already carried out without planning permission by those bodies and established a framework for the future application of planning permission requirements to their development proposals. After the end of a transitional period which runs out on 15 June, development by these bodies will need planning permission unless it is exempted development or is covered by regulations under section 2 of the 1993 Act or is the subject of a ministerial order under that section declaring that it is necessary because of an accident or an emergency.
Section 2 of the 1993 Act allows the Minister for the Environment to provide, by regulations, that the planning Acts will not apply to proposed development by a State authority if the development has to be authorised under another enactment or if, in the Minister's opinion, it is in connection with or for the purposes of public safety or order, the administration of justice or national security or defence.
The power under section 2 of the 1993 Act has been carried through under Part XIII of the regulations. The only development that has been excluded from the scope of the planning Acts on the grounds that it has to be authorised under another statutory procedure is arterial drainage works by the Office of Public Works, which require the approval of the Minister for Finance under procedures in the Arterial Drainage Act, 1945. The developments excluded from the remit of the planning Acts on national security or related grounds include courthouses, prisons, Army and Garda premises, office buildings and other premises used by the President of Ireland, Dáil Éireann, Seanad Éireann, certain Government Departments and the Offices of the Attorney General, the Chief State Solicitor and the Director of Public Prosecutions.
It will be readily accepted by Senators that developments of the categories I have mentioned cannot be subjected to public disclosure of detailed plans and particulars. For example, no one would suggest that detailed layout plans of a prison or an Army barracks should be available to the public generally. This means, therefore, that such development has to stand outside the normal scope of the planning Acts. Nevertheless, it has been ensured there will be as much public information about, and involvement with, the excluded development as is consistent with security considerations. A lot of the excluded development will, in fact, be subject to alternative requirements of public notice and participation.
The alternative requirements will oblige a State authority proposing an excluded development to give public notice of the proposal and to notify the relevant planning authority. Outline plans and particulars of the proposal will be made available for inspection and there will be a period of six weeks for making submissions. The State authority proposing a development will have an express legal duty to have regard to submissions received and must give public notice of its decision on whether it will proceed with the development.
It was indicated at the time of enactment of the 1993 Act that development would be excluded from the scope of the planning Acts on security grounds only where this was unavoidable in the public interest. The limited range of development to which Part XIII applies shows that this principle has been adhered to. We are now moving towards a situation in which, as and from 15 June, most development by Government Departments and the Office of Public Works will be subject to the full provisions of the planning Acts.
Parts X and XIII of the regulations complete the movement towards greater openness for public development initiated by the 1993 Act and are ushering in an era of clearly established rights to know about and be involved with development by local and State authorities.
With regard to the notice requirements for planning applications, Senators will be aware that, under the previous regulations, applicants generally had a choice between publishing notice of the application in a newspaper or erecting a notice on the site. It has been suggested in the past that these arrangements did not necessarily ensure that people would learn of applications of relevance to them. It was concluded, following careful consideration of the position and evaluation of various options, that applicants should be required both to publish newspaper notice and to erect a site notice. The choice between the two forms of notice has been removed, therefore, and both are required for any planning application that is received by a planning authority on or after 16 May. These new requirements, taken together with the new provisions governing weekly lists, should ensure maximum public awareness of development proposals. As a result interested persons and bodies will be able to fully utilise the extensive opportunities for participation in relation to development proposals which our planning system gives them.
Planning authorities were already obliged, under the 1977 planning regulations, to produce a weekly list of planning applications received. However, the 1994 regulations have extended this requirement and the list must now give details of applications decided, cases in which the planning authority receive further information and certain other information. This will make it considerably more informative and it will also be more widely available than hitherto, as it will have to be displayed in public libraries as well as in the planning authority's offices. In addition, copies have to be made available to interested persons and bodies, free of charge or for a reasonable fee. Apart from these mandatory requirements, it will also be open to an authority to put the list on display elsewhere or to publish it or make it available for publication in a newspaper.
There is also a new requirement for An Bord Pleanála to publish a weekly list of planning appeals received and decided. Like a planning authority's list of planning applications, the board's list will have to be available by the third working day following the week to which it relates. The board's list will be displayed at its offices and copies will be made available to interested persons and bodies.
A further change that has been made in the interests of openness and transparency is to require any submissions or observations made to a planning authority about a planning application to be made available for public inspection along with the other documents relating to the application. There has been no legal obligation up to now to make these submissions or observations available and, in practice, only certain planning authorities have done so. However, an applicant has a right to know of submissions made about his or her development proposals and the new provision will ensure that the applicant has access to them.
The new measures are aimed at maximising public information about planning cases and reflect the principles of openness and transparency which form the foundations of many of the changes the new regulations introduce. I hope that Senators will recognise that full account has been taken of the views on the public notice issue expressed in this House in recent years when planning Bills were under consideration.
I will now discuss the provisions of the regulations dealing with exempted development. Exempted development is development which does not need planning permission and is specified in section 4 of the 1963 Planning Act and in regulations made under that section. The 1994 regulations update this area by ending some of the existing exemptions, placing restrictions on other exemptions and establishing some new categories of exempted development.
The exemption for laying out and use of land as a golf course has been removed and any development of that nature commenced after 16 May will need planning permission. This change has been made because the development of a golf course is significant in terms of the proper planning and development of the area concerned and should be subject to the full rigours of the planning process.
The regulations also establish a number of new restrictions on exemption which will be important from the conservation perspective. Before the 1994 regulations, the demolition of any building other than a habitable house or a listed building could be carried out without planning permission. There will no longer be an exemption, however, for demolition of a building which forms part of a terrace of buildings or which abuts another building in separate ownership. This will allow the development control process to pass judgment on the street-scape and other implications of demolition proposals affecting such buildings.
A further restriction limits the exhibition of advertisements on listed buildings. Planning permission will be necessary for any advertisements, other than certain small signs, on these buildings. The planning process will adjudicate on the appropriateness of proposals to display advertisements on buildings which development plans have identified as being important for architectural or historical reasons.
Among the other new restrictions is an overall limit of 25 square metres on the area of garages and sheds that can be built without planning permission in the curtilage of a house. There were no limits on this exemption before the 1994 regulations. This sometimes caused problems because it was used to build large and obtrusive structures. The regulations also put a height limit of 40 metres on navigational aids that may be built without planning permission. This restriction was considered necessary because structures higher than this could have a significant impact on the landscape and should be subject to authorisation through the planning process.
The new exemptions include the use of a house to accommodate up to six persons with a mental or physical disability and not more than two resident carers. It was concluded that this use could not be regarded as significant in purely planning terms and should be possible without planning permission. Among the other new exemptions are minor works by Government Departments and the Office of Public Works, such as provision of temporary structures in connection with visits of foreign dignitaries, maintenance of inland waterways, erection of certain minor structures, etc. None of these forms of development is significant in terms of land use or proper planning and development.
The regulations have also dealt with the position of television satellite dishes, which were not covered under the earlier regulations. One satellite dish will be allowed on a house other than a listed building without planning permission. There will, however, be a size limit and restrictions as to where the dish may be placed, aimed at minimising visual obtrusiveness. I am satisfied that the correct balance has been struck between visual amenity and the technical requirements for location of a dish.
The new exemption which allows the use of up to four bedrooms in a house for bed and breakfast purposes without planning permission has attracted some attention. I would like to take this opportunity to explain the background to the exemption and to respond to some of the unnecessary concerns that seem to have arisen.
Until now, the planning code has not contained any provision in relation to bed and breakfast accommodation. In practice, however, many such establishments have operated for long periods without planning permission. Their planning status became an issue last year when An Bord Pleanála decided, as a result of a reference under section 5 of the Planning Act, 1963, that planning permission was required for the use of a particular house for bed and breakfast purposes.
In legal terms this decision strictly related only to the particular case but in reality it created quite a degree of uncertainty about the planning status of bed and breakfast accommodation generally. For this reason, it was decided that a clarifying provision would have to be included in the new regulations which were then in preparation. These allow the use of up to four bedrooms in a house for overnight guest accommodation as exempted development and planning permission will not be needed for such premises.
However, the exemption will not apply if the bed and breakfast use would be contrary to a condition of the planning permission for the house, or be inconsistent with any use specified in the permission. Bed and breakfast operations of the scale covered will not have significant effects in terms of the proper planning and development of the areas in which they are located. Moreover, the exemption will not change significantly the actual position which has obtained for many years.
The exemption does not affect the application of other statutory requirements to bed and breakfast accommodation. For example, the fire safety and other requirements of the building control code will apply where there is a change of use of a house for bed and breakfast purposes. In the same way, the application of the fire safety requirements of the Fire Services Act, 1981, to premises providing sleeping accommodation will not be affected.
I am advised also that the requirements of the food hygiene regulations apply to any premises on which food is prepared for public consumption. Bed arid breakfast operations, regardless of their planning status, will, therefore, have to observe proper hygiene standards. In no way can it be said, therefore, that the new planning exemption means that there are no controls and standards for bed and breakfast premises.
The changes affecting exemption from planning permission requirements are, in my view, a balanced and coherent set of measures. They will facilitate the more effective operation of development controls, by concentrating on those developments which are of greatest consequence in land use terms.
The new regulations are complemented by another initiative to improve openness and clarity in planning matters. This is a series of leaflets covering various aspects of the planning system. The leaflets deal with a wide range of issues, such as completing an application form, the options available for commenting on planning issues, the planning requirements when building or extending a house and sectoral matters such as the planning requirements for farmers and business people.
The series complements the leaflet on the new planning appeals process which was published following the Planning Act, 1992, and which helped to ensure the trouble-free changeover to the new appeal arrangements. There was a great demand for that leaflet and this made clear the need for clear and readily available information on the planning process and its workings.
The central objective in drawing up the new leaflets has been to set out the provisions of the planning code concisely and without any legal or technical jargon. The series is as complete as possible and deals with the questions most often asked by members of the public. The leaflets will promote greater public understanding of the planning system, including the changes brought in by the 1994 regulations, and should help to ensure that there is nothing intimidating about the system.
The demand for the leaflets since they were made available through planning authorities is a clear indication of people's interest in planning matters and underscores the importance of the many changes in the new regulations which are aimed at public information and participation.
The 1994 regulations are a comprehensive response to the need to rationalise and modernise secondary planning legislation. They will increase the effectiveness and transparency of the planning system. Together with the new information leaflets, the regulations will make the system more understandable and accessible for those whom the system is intended to serve.