More County Planners Needed, Says Doran

Wicklow News

News Archives

/ News /

Printable Version

Email this Story

More County Planners Needed, Says Doran

Thursday, March 22 2007

Young couples are being put under an unfair financial burden, because planning applications take so long in the county. “Because there’s a shortage of staff in the planning department of Wicklow County Council, couples have to rent houses while waiting up to three years for their planning application to be processed,” said Cllr. Pat Doran, who’s based in Carnew.

“It’s very seldom that a planning application goes through at its first attempt,” he said, adding that it can take young couples up to six months to get an appointment for a pre-planning meeting with Council officials. “Priority is given to developers, simply because there’s not enough staff to go around, but it’s unfair to place so many obstacles in the way of ordinary people.”

Planning regulations place huge restrictions on where people can build their own house, what type of house they can build, and how it can be built, he said. People want to comply with the regulations, but the emphasis on keeping houses invisible in Co. Wicklow is simply not practical in many rural communities and in many farming families, said Cllr. Doran, who is standing as an Independent candidate in the upcoming election.

Under the current regulations, Wicklow County Council would prefer if people built a house behind another house or behind a ditch. Anywhere, so long as it is not visible. That’s simply not practical, in terms of the quality of land for sites, or in terms of family farms, said Cllr. Doran. Everybody accepts the need for regulations, but they must make sense in the context of people’s everyday lives and needs.

Printable Version

Email this Story