EU ruling on waste water hits permission for one-off housing

IT will be increasingly difficult to secure planning permission for one-off rural homes that aren’t connected to public sewers, following a judgment of the European Court of Justice yesterday.

The Luxembourg-based court ruled that Ireland had failed to fulfil its obligations to comply with an EU directive that waste water from septic tanks is recovered and disposed of without endangering human health.

The ECJ said standards used in granting planning permissions “did not ensure a level of environmental and human health protection as high as that pursued by [the EU] directive”.