Record number of planning applications to be processed this year
Details of major growth in the region’s housing sector were revealed yesterday when the council’s senior planner, Valerie O’Sullivan, said that predictions for house completions in 2005 had been shattered.
She said that under the County Development Plan it had been envisaged that 5,000 houses and apartments would be completed in Co Cork last year, but, in fact there were 8,800.
Officials have confirmed that they are having to deal with more planning applications than any other local authority in the country.
Because of the huge number of applications, the council yesterday unveiled a new planning section on its website which it hopes will significantly cut the number of planning enquiries its hard-pressed staff have to deal with, by making a lot more information available online at www.corkcoco.ie.
Statistics revealed by the council show that 9,386 planning applications were received in 2005.
By October 31 this year the council had received 10,132 applications and predicts that before the end of December that figure will have topped 12,000.
Its 152 staff in the planning department are now making decisions on up to 800 applications a month. They are working flat out, but are being hampered by the Department of the Environment’s embargo on hiring additional local authority staff.
Planning officials said that while there had been a major rush to develop land along the proposed commuter railway corridor, especially around Midleton and Carrigtwohill, in recent months there had been a shift by developers to smaller villages. There are very few villages anywhere in the county which haven’t this year had applications for anything between 50 and 150 homes.
The County Development Plan is to be reviewed in the next few months and further rezoning of land would be expected to yield large planning applications.
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