unauthorised development
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does any one know exactly how the planning authority deals with reports of unauthorised developments, if you report an authorised developer can anyuone find out that you were the one who reported it. I know of a case where a person sent a few letters to the council to report an unauthorised development which eventually had to apply for retention. The developer obtained copies of these letters from the council and used them to issue proceedings against the person who reported them for defamation alleging that the person who reported the development had caused them to be published by sending them in to the council. The letters were not objections as they were outside the 5 week period for submissions but were letters informing the council of a perceived unauthorised devlopment which proved to be well founded. Is it usual for the council to let anyone see these type of letters informing them of unauthorised development. Surely this would deter anyuone from reporting unauthorised develpoments if this is so.
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Guess they shouldn’t have signed the letters!!! There deffinitly seems to be more than a bit of a problem here with retrospective permission applications and the ammount of refusals for permissions for retention. I think a lot of developers know that 99% of the time ifthey get it built they will be let keep it. The comference centre being a prime example. and probably one of the largest scale examples but this kind of crime[/U is rampent at a smaller scale. The example cited above is an example of how ludicrous the system is and the perception of how incignificant the having of permission is to some that after doing wrong then taking legal action against the good citizen who reported the crime for what?reporting him!! -ridiculous.
I personally think that even the submissions against permissions at local authority level shoud be anonomous as I know that especially in tighter knit communities objections can be taken too seriously and locals are less lightly to object in case of stepping on neighbours/employers/families toes. this doesn’t make for a healthy planning system. Recently looking at an application for a one off house in rural donegal I noted that 100% of the objections against it except for one by an taisce were by non-local people who either holiday there and/or own second homes there and saying this there was a sizable ammount of objections. I don’t believe the reason for this is apathy on the part of locals.
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There are a number of defences to a claim for defamation. Most importantly if what one says/writes is true, then no defamation has occurred. If legal action is being taken, then what was written may not have been true in the first place.
The moral of the story is not to send in inaccurate letters to the Local Authority.
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