The Planning and Development (Amendment) Bill 2016 makes provision for the establishment of the Office of the Planning Regulator (OPR), which was one of the recommendations made in the Final Report of the Tribunal of Inquiry into Certain Planning Matters and Payments (also known as the Mahon Tribunal).
The Office will be independent of my Department and will be responsible for the independent assessment of all local authority and regional assembly forward planning, including zoning decisions of local authority members in local area plans and development plans, to ensure compliance with relevant national and/or regional policy.
The Office will be empowered to review the organisation, systems and procedures used by any planning authority or An Bord Pleanála in the performance of any their planning functions under the Planning Acts, including risks of corruption and on foot of individual complaints from members of the public. It will also be empowered to drive a national research, education and public information programme to highlight the role and benefit of planning.
In establishing the OPR, the Government’s aim is to ensure proper oversight over the systems and procedures used by planning authorities and ensure public confidence in the delivery of quality outcomes, while avoiding overlap with existing appeals procedures in relation to individual cases operated by An Bord Pleanála and the role of the Courts.
Responsibility for planning policy remains with the local government system, working within the legislative and policy framework for planning established at the national level.
The National Transport Authority (NTA) has responsibility for “strategic planning of transport” and Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII) has responsibility for delivering transport infrastructure, in line with strategic transport planning. These are very clear and distinct roles, with their own broad legislative and policy framework governing their functions.
In preparing its Transport Strategy, the NTA is required to have regard to a number of matters, including the National Spatial Strategy (soon to be replaced by the National Planning Framework (NPF) currently being developed), local authority development plans, and the Regional Planning Guidelines for the regions.
In addition, the NTA is required by law to ensure that the Transport Strategy is consistent with the Regional Planning Guidelines and subsequently with their replacement plans, the Regional Spatial and Economic Strategies, which will take account of the new NPF.
It is not proposed that the OPR will have any function to review strategic transport plans drafted by the NTA or TII, nor will it have a specific statutory power to ask those bodies to alter elements of their plans. These bodies are already bound to develop their strategies in line with the National Spatial Strategy but it is acknowledged that a much more integrated approach needs to be developed between planning and transport. Existing legislation seeks to achieve this by requiring, on a statutory basis, consistency between strategic transport planning, in the form of the Transport Strategy, and regional level land use planning. It is considered unnecessary to give further statutory functions to the OPR, given that statutory obligations already exist and better integration will be promoted by co-operation and collaboration between policy makers, the OPR, NTA and TII in practice, to ensure that cohesive land use planning and transport provision are achieved.
