An Bord Pleanála said today it had reduced its backlog of planning appeals by almost 50 per cent and was now able to give decisions within 18 weeks in most cases.
In its annual report, the Board said the level of arrears of work had been transformed in the past year and it was delivering much faster decisions on planning decisions.
Chairman, Mr John O'Connor said a 21 per cent increase in the Board's output, in terms of cases disposed of, allied to a 14 per cent decline in the intake of cases this year has resulted in the volume of appeal cases on hand dropping to 1,440.
Mr O'Connor said the backlog had been eliminted and that the workload is now at a level consistent with the Board's strategic target of giving decisions within 18 weeks in 90 per cent of cases.
The overall percentage of local authority decisions appealed to the Board in 2001 remained constant at 7 per cent in 2001. Overall the rate of reversal of local authority decisions by the Board was 29 per cent up from 27 per cent in 2000.
Referring to the change-over to the 2000 Act, which affects all applications made after March 11th this year, Mr O'Connor said there had been a significant drop in the number of appeals because "of the initially large numbers of deficient applications and the new rules governing third appeals".
"The percentage of appeals that are invalid is significantly higher under the 2000 Act than previously. This is due to the new requirement that third party appellants must produce evidence of having made a submission to the Planning Authority in relation to the initial application and also to the change in the appeal period from one month to four weeks," he said.
In its report, the Board voiced concern about the quality of environmental impact studies it had received in relation to private developments. It said it finds itself frequently having to ask for additional information which should have been included.
