This article is from page 13 of the 2006-10-10 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 13 JPG
CLARE County Council is facing two legal challenges over claims that it failed to give planning decisions within the eight week time limit.
The news caused anger and demands at last night’s county council meeting for an explanation as to why decisions could be delayed, exposing the authority to expensive legal action.
In answer to a motion he put before the meeting, Councillor PJ Kelly (FF) was told that there were two cases between January 1, 2005 and September 30, 2006, in which it was claimed that the council failed to give a decision on applications within the time limit.
In one of these cases, the applicant exercised his right and went to the High Court demanding permission. It was refused, but that is now being appealed to a higher court.
The second applicant’s High Court case has been “adjourned, pending steps being taken subject to a confidential agreement.”
Cllr Kelly said that there should be “no confidential agreements. If our staff make a mistake, we should be informed about it. And I believe that these mistakes are made because of ad-hockery.”
Cllr Kelly asked that the manager come back and inform him whether there had been any settlements or offers of settlements made in similar planning cases in the same period and to supply details of these.
Cllr Joe Atkins (FG) said that he wanted the file numbers of the two cases made available to all members of the planning authority.
Cllr Christy Curtin (Ind) said that it was the duty of the executive to inform the members of any decision that could cost the local authority money.
Cllr Tommy Brennan (Ind) called for a copy of the confidential agreement mentioned in the official response to be made available to the councillors.
County Manager, Alec Fleming, told the meeting that there were in the order of 5,000 applications in the period in question and there were alleged to be problems with just two.
“Planning is not always as straightforward as taking a decision within the eight week period specified. If further information is requested then that has to be dealt with in four weeks and so on.
“We have a very robust system in place for dealing with this, but any kind of fall down is worrying,” he said.
The manager told members that he would have to seek legal advice before responding to many of the queries raise by Cllr Kelly and other members.