Unfinished

AN Irish Examiner investigation into the scourge of unfinished estates has shown how thousands of householders are living in developments where unsurfaced roads, poor drainage, open sewage treatment plants and no public lighting are the norm.

A survey of 28 county councils has found that in excess of 650 estates lie unfinished across the country.

In addition, our investigation discovered:

* More than half the councils (15) reported that the current scale of unfinished estates is unprecedented.

* More than one in five said the bonds in place were inadequate to complete outstanding work.

* Just one local authority — Clare County Council — has set aside a budget to take unfinished estates in charge in 2010.

* 14% admitted they did not have the resources to deal with the problem.

Our special three-day investigation will also reveal how the prospect of living on an unfinished estate will intensify if proposals contained in the new Planning and Development Bill 2009, currently before the Oireachtas, are endorsed.

For the first time, under this proposed legislation, economic circumstances will be taken into account when deciding whether to grant a developer additional time to complete a project.

The legislation also proposes granting a five-year extension in addition to the original five-year planning permission, where economic conditions mitigate against completion of work.

This could potentially leave householders with a 17-year wait before a development is completed because a local authority has seven years after the expiry of a planning permission in which to take enforcement action against an aberrant developer.

A spokesperson for the Department of the Environment said in tandem with looking at power to extend planning permission, they will also need to look at extending the life of bonds, which normally expire shortly after the deadline for the planning permission.

“If we are permitting developers to seek extensions to their permissions for up to a further five years, we also have to make provision to enable us to extend or renegotiate the bond to cover the extended period,” the spokesperson said.

Bonds are a form of insurance agreed at the outset between the council and the developer, which the council can call on if work is not completed to agreed standards.

However, bond companies generally have to be satisfied that every other legal avenue has been exhausted before releasing a bond.

Eamonn Hore, director of services at Wexford County Council, said he believed bond companies now saw bonds “very much as a huge liability given that so many developers are in financial trouble”.

Wexford has formally written to 12 bond companies in the past six months, informing them that the bond will be required in relation to specific estates. The council has had to take planning enforcement action against developers in more than 90 cases in the past two years.

Mr Hore said they were dealing with a number of cases where the developer has “disappeared’ and the bond would “not even go close” to rectifying the estates’ problems.

Bonds vary widely, from €2,000 per house in Cavan to €10,000 in Waterford.

Waterford County Council director of services Brian White said where a developer goes into receivership/examinership, often “the banks and lending institutions have first charges in place and the local authority is not the preferential creditor”.