Councillor in plea to halt rogue developers

FIFTEEN individual developers received three or more warnings from the council in the past 16 months, according to figures released at this week’s adjourned meeting of Clare County Council.

And the council may soon begin to consider a developer’s past actions when deciding whether or not to grant planning permission in the future.
North Clare Councillor Martin Conway believes the council already has the legal power to take past indiscretions into account in planning decisions.  “I am quite concerned about the reply to this motion. I raised this matter to establish who the crooks were – the people who have had multiple difficulties with Clare County Council about breaking the planning laws. There are several offenders in this county. There are a group of individuals who are consistently breaking the planning laws and who are receiving warning notices like they are confetti,” he said.
“There is now a section in the planning laws which allows us to take the past profile of developers into account when we are considering granting planning permissions. I believe that where we have serial offenders, we need to move on these people.”
He said that there is a process through section 35 of the 2000 Planning Act that allows the planning authority to form an opinion of an applicant. “I think that we need to go through the legal route and build up a profile of the serial offenders,” Councillor Conway added.
According to figures produced in response to Councillor Conway’s motion, 15 developers received three or more warnings from the council in the past 16 months. In the same time period, nine Clare developers received three or more enforcement notices and 12 developers received three or more other forms of censure.
County manager Tom Coughlan said there is a legal framework to take past actions into account in planning permission considerations but that the process is very expensive and slow. “There is a process which we can go through.
“There is also the option of taking an injunction but that is very expensive and I know of some which take up to 18 months. With the legal options at the moment, there isn’t a quick way to do it. There is not a way to get in fast and the problem fixed fast,” he added.