Mandatory ministerial planning regulations that take precedence over democratically adopted city and county development plans have created a privatised planning system under which local authorities are obliged to grant permission for schemes that contravene their own policies.
It has led to a collapse in the faith of ordinary citizens in the integrity of the planning process and seriously undermined public trust in the impartiality of An Bord Pleanála.
The board’s transformation in 2017 from an appellate body into a one-stop shop for deciding on large-scale strategic housing developments (SHDs) tarnished its reputation. The resulting governance issues and impacts on its decision-making capacity were not adequately considered.
An Bord Pleanála was set up in 1976 to replace the power of the minister of the day to decide on planning appeals. But mandatory guidelines introduced in recent years have reversed that separation by reimposing centralisation, and this flies in the face of public participation in the planning process.
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It may be difficult for readers to understand how all this could possibly have happened.
Until 2015, section 28 (ministerial guidelines) of the Planning and Development Act, 2000, gave guidance to planning authorities. These guidelines served planning well for decades. The rot started in 2015 with the introduction of a new concept – “specific planning policy requirements” (SPPRs), which replaced this guidance by mandatory regulations removing any discretion from planning authorities.
We must have a new conversation. One where ordinary citizens have a voice in the planned development of their areas equal to the voices of the industry, the professionals, the public and private sector, and those who have no homes
SPPRs were imposed at the behest of the property industry, effectively to deny the right of planning authorities to set their own housing design standards. So far, 28 SPPRs have been promulgated, with another seven now on the desk of Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien.
The first set of SPPRs, imposed in 2015 by then Labour minister Alan Kelly, prevented planning authorities from setting minimum floor areas for communal facilities in apartments, facilitated the introduction of “studios” (apartments with no bedrooms), as well as more “single-aspect” units (windows in only one direction) and longer corridors.
Kelly’s successor, Simon Coveney of Fine Gael, responded to lobbying by Property Industry Ireland by introducing legislation in 2016 to permit developers to bypass the local authorities altogether and apply directly to An Bord Pleanála for SHDs (housing schemes with more than 100 units), with no right of appeal.
The absolute power that this gave An Bord Planeála has undermined trust and overwhelmed it . Applications are still being lodged for SHDs, three years after it was originally meant to end.
Coveney’s successor, Eoghan Murphy of Fine Gael, imposed yet more SPPRs to reduce apartment standards, restricting control by local authorities of housing mix, space standards, as well increasing the number of apartments per core (which means longer corridors and more single-aspect apartments). The SPPR that caused the most dramatic reductions in standards came from his introduction of a new type of development called build-to-rent (BTR) and shared accommodation (co-living). Co-living was revoked when O’Brien took office.
BTR has many flaws: no restrictions on housing mix, lower standards of private amenity space, reduced car-parking spaces and no restriction on the number of apartments per core. According to the chief executive of Dublin City Council, these BTR schemes now make up 82 per cent of applications.
In December 2018, Murphy turbo-charged the BTR trend, by issuing another four SPPRs. These disallowed planning authorities from setting height limits, obliging them to grant permission for high buildings even where that contravened their own development plans.
One of these SPPRs required minimum densities, without setting any upper limits, thereby leaving it up to developers to determine how dense any scheme could be. This has opened the floodgates for potential “overcrowding”, with permissions granted by An Bord Pleanála for densities that are even higher than those of the tenement era in Dublin.
These changes were made on the basis that previous restrictions were preventing the delivery of housing. Seven years after the first SPPR in 2015, the industry still cannot supply the housing that we need. The result has been to boost land values, such that site costs now often exceed €100,000 per unit.
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We have ended up with a system that has produced thousands of permissions for grossly over-scaled developments unaffordable to build, rent or buy. A system where the only viable construction types are lowest-standard, multi-storey BTR and three-storey suburban development, neither of which will solve our needs.
It is a system that excludes the voice of the citizen. One where centralised power dictates to the periphery. It has the most uncertain outcomes for both the citizen and the developer. This benefits nobody.
We must reinstate city and county development plans as the rule books against which planning permission is granted or refused. This would give certainty to all in a process that includes public participation and consultation, which is not the case at present.
We must have a new conversation. One where ordinary citizens have a voice in the planned development of their areas equal to the voices of the industry, the professionals, the public and private sector, and those who have no homes.
Together we can meet the challenge of affordable housing for sustainable communities and good urban planning that solve human-made climate change.
Robin Mandal, FRIAI chairs the Dublin Democratic Planning Alliance. He is a former director of RMA Architecture and a former president of the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland.