Almost 500 planning complaints made in Limerick
LIMERICK City and County Council has received almost 500 complaints in relation to planning over a year, it's been revealed.
Documents presented to Social Democrats councillor Elisa O'Donovan at this month's metropolitan district meeting show between May 1, 2022 and April 30 this year, some 487 complaints had been made to the local authority in relation to planning enforcement matters.
In simple terms, this means ensuring laws around planning are complied with.
Planning enforcement is designed to ensure decisions taken by local planners are carried out on the finished building or development.
It deals with those who flout the law by ignoring, or not complying with the planning process.
Following a number of well-publicised incidents across Limerick, Cllr O'Donovan sought a breakdown of the cases presented to the local authority for the urban metropolitan district specifically.
In a written answer, senior planner Nuala O'Connell offered the statistics for the city and county overall.
She said its planning enforcement section had received 487 complaints across the last 12 months to the start of May.
Investigations into 16 of these complaints led to court proceedings being initiated, with a further 13 under review.
A further 48 cases of potentially unauthorised or dangerous developments were under investigation.
And, the council revealed, that it had served 56 enforcement notices on parties who own land, or were seeking planning permission.
Enforcement notices are legal documents.
They state when action needs to be taken to fix a breach of planning control.
They are issued where development has taken place without the correct planning permission or outside what was allowed by any planning permission that was given.
Prior to this, the council would issue a warning notice.
And according to the statistics presented to metropolitan councillors, 188 of these 'warning letters' had been served in the last 12 months.
Cases were closed on 166 of the complaints which were made to council.