LOCAL AUTHORITIES should be reduced in number from 88 to fewer than 10 as part of wholesale reform of planning systems, the president of the Irish Planning Institute Brendan Allen has said.
Speaking in Kilkenny yesterday on the opening day of the institute’s annual conference, Mr Allen said planners in the public and private sectors had made mistakes during the boom and must bear some responsibility for the past failings of the planning system.
However, he said planners had only been part of the problem and the planning system as a whole needed to be reformed.
The large number of small planning authorities had resulted in “poor decision-making” in a national and regional context and a focus on “localism”, he said.
As a starting point, the 88 local authorities could be reduced by eliminating town and borough councils, leaving just 34 county and city councils. However, for proper planning this was probably still too large.
“For planning purposes we need larger planning regions with greater power. We need planning authorities based around the major cities and centres such as Athlone. Really we need about eight or nine in total.”
Mr Allen rejected a claim in a recent report on planning (see below) by An Taisce that planners had failed to vocalise concerns and to exercise sufficient judgment throughout the boom. As early as 2003 the institute had called for reform of the system, he said. However, he said planners did have to accept some level of responsibility for the mistakes of the past.
“As planners we would have issued decisions which in hindsight would not appear to be wise.” When land had been rezoned by councillors for housing, there was an expectation that planners would grant permission, he said. “There were many cases where permission was refused, but there were also many cases where there should have been a refusal and there was not.”
The planning profession was largely divided between local authority and other public bodies, and consultants working for developers and the private sector. “There would have been consultants pushing developments which in hindsight did not constitute good planning,” he said.
However, he said some local authorities’ planners had been overly influenced by the culture of their local authority.
“While planners are professionals it is very difficult to ignore the culture filtering down from the county manager, and sometimes people can’t help but be influenced by it.”
Mr Allen said he would support the appointment of a planning regulator but said this office should be established as a division on An Bord Pleanála to avoid the creation of a new State agency. The National Spatial Strategy which was drawn up a decade ago was “no longer fit for purpose” and should be redrawn, he said.
Vested interests, a government seeking tax revenues, and a “very compliant public” contributed to bad planning, Waterford city manager Michael Walsh said.
During the boom, his success as a city manager was measured by the number of houses and the amount of commercial development built in Waterford. “The truth is that it was an incredibly tough place to be.” The whole culture demanded “repulsive” levels of development and there was “phenomenal pressure pressing down on the regulatory system”.
A regulatory system only works if it has the co-operation of those regulated, he said. Rural dwellers saw an entitlement to build on their own land and wanted development so that local schools and pubs could survive, and the urban public wanted suburban living with a front and back garden, not smaller town centre units. The public didn’t give “a flying toss” if these things met with sustainable development, he said.
