Guide on Planning Needed for Councillors
Friday, October 24, 2008
New councillors elected in next year’s local authority elections should be given an instruction manual on the planning system by the Minister for the Environment, Local Government and Heritage, the President of the Irish Planning Institute (IPI), Mr Andrew Hind, suggested today at the Irish Planning Institute Autumn Conference, at the Radisson Hotel, Dublin.
But he warned that he and the IPI were totally opposed to excluding democratically elected local representatives from the planning process altogether. Addressing the IPI’s Autumn Conference in Dublin, Mr Hind stated: “Over the last year or more there have been repeated calls in the media to reform our planning system and seriously curtail or even exclude the role of elected members altogether. Indeed the Minister has indicated that he will include some additional provisions in the new Planning Bill that will limit some of the powers currently available to elected members with regard to development and local area plans.”
However, he said: “Revising our legislation to exclude elected members from the planning system altogether so that all decisions both on policy or zoning and on planning applications were taken by the executive would be deeply anti-democratic and whilst some would hope that it might well eliminate some or even all of the ‘horror-story’ zoning decisions, in my view such a step would do little or nothing to restore or rebuild public confidence in the planning system.”
Mr Hind told delegates that there seemed to be a lack of any clear consensus about what we expect from our locally elected politicians when it comes to their role in the planning system. “What is their role in representing the broad views of the communities that they represent? Should they give priority to constituents from the electoral areas they represent? Is it appropriate for our locally elected representatives to act as advocates on behalf of so-called ‘clients’ on wider issues,” he asked.
There had been some formal Ministerial guidance for elected members prepared in 2004 about how local authorities work but there was no section dealing with planning. “Surprising really, because I think many elected members would agree with me that dealing with planning issues consumes more of their time and energy than any other topic,” Mr Hind stated. With Local Government elections due next June, newly elected representatives will enter Council Chambers for the first time.
“As a step towards restoring public confidence in our planning system, after all the tribunals, I believe it would be beneficial to all if the Minister were to issue formal guidance on the role of elected members in the planning process,” said Mr Hind. This guidance would assist all the stakeholders in the planning system (the public, national and local government officials, landowners or others as well the elected members themselves) in understanding their roles and could facilitate more effective and appropriate interaction between the key groups.
The Minister’s guidance could set out proposals that would result in a more consistent approach in all areas of the country including:
- Guidance on the general role of elected members in relation to constituents’ interests
- ‘Best-practice’ advice on the structure and conduct of Council meetings during the preparation of development and local area plans so that proposals for inclusion in emerging plans are introduced early to allow full exposure to public debate, proper consideration by council planners and other officials and to allow a full and considered debate in the public meetings of the authority
- Advice on model arrangements to allow elected members’ view to be taken into account in the determination of planning applications.
Mr Hind concluded: “If we don’t have the right balance between the executive, elected representatives and citizens in our plan-making system then we won’t deliver the quality of local area plans, backed by the broad consensus necessary to underpin their implementation, which we need in today’s circumstances. We have invested heavily over the last 10 years or so in what I call planning infrastructure, a modern legislative framework and comprehensive policy guidance but, we all need to ‘invest’ in the role for elected representatives and citizen to build public confidence in our plans.”
Mr Tony Dalton, Principal Officer Planning & Building Unit, Department of Education and Science, gave details of the new Code of Practice for the Provision of Schools and the Planning System which seeks to achieve greater co-ordination of new schools and development. With Up to 100,000 additional primary and post-primary school places required over the next seven years, he said that acquiring sites and providing this level of school accommodation across multiple locations will be extremely challenging and will require a high level of co-ordination and planning.
Under the Code of Practice there will be closer co-operation between the Department of Education and relevant local authorities in planning for schools and the identifying and acquisition of sites while Mr Dalton said the Department required that site reservations to be made as close as possible to community facilities so that these can be shared.
The Department was also promoting the concept of multi-school campus arrangements (eg two or more primaries side-by-side or a primary and a post-primary school sharing a site. Both of these approaches could have the effect of reducing the land take for school development. Clr Catherine Murphy from Kildare stated that the planning system has become much more technical and more professional which could be off-putting to citizens who want to voice an opinion but don’t have technical skills.
Councils often engage firms of consultants to prepare Development Plans and while they have technical and professional expertise, the role of the public representative can be vital in bringing local knowledge, local expectations and local demands to the table but also the trust that has been placed through the democratic process to act on behalf of that community.
She added: “Those with a financial rather than a social vested interest are often in a position to engage professionals to make submissions at the appropriate time while the community, who must rely on voluntary effort, often require the consent of constituent groups such as residents associations, community councils and other sporting and community groups before making an input. “ Cllr Murphy said she knew there had been situations where public representatives were “the developers voice and did not act on behalf of the community. It’s part of why the process must be transparent why it must be done in public.”