Sir, – Charles McLaughlin (Letters, April 7th) argues that individuals who object to planning applications are the “elephant in the room” who prevent the building of new homes.
This argument promotes a widely held myth, which is assiduously promoted by some Government Ministers, that the housing crisis is caused by the failures of the planning system and delays caused by local objectors.
This misleading and inaccurate portrayal of the planning system conveniently absolves the Government of blame by placing responsibility on residents who make submissions on planning applications.
The Residential Task Force data available to local authorities tells a very different story. In Fingal County Council alone, the task force data up to July 2022 shows there were 53 non-active sites with 6,505 housing units that had been granted planning permission since 2017.
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Developers had not commenced any work at all on these non-active sites and none of these homes had been built. Moreover, this was not simply a consequence of Covid 19 – 1,414 of these housing units secured permission between 2017 and 2019 before the pandemic and still no work had commenced up to July 2022. Indeed, another 944 units were approved before 2017 and had received an extension of duration as no work had been done.
This lack of progress in building homes in the midst of a housing crisis simply beggars belief. The data suggests that many developers are unable or unwilling to build homes in a timely way even when they receive planning permission.
These figures apply only to a single local authority and the Department of Housing has an obligation to investigate whether a similar pattern of dysfunction applies across the country. But even this data explodes the myth that the housing crisis is caused by delays in the planning system; it is more plausible that the “elephant in the room” is the failure to develop non-active sites where homes have never been built despite receiving planning permission. – Yours, etc,
CLLR JOHN WALSH,
Dublin 15.