Just 15 per cent of the new planners sought by city and county managers two years ago to speed up the delivery of new housing have been recruited, latest figures show.
While delays in the planning process are cited by developers, builders and utilities as a big reason for the undersupply of housing, the planning departments of local authorities remain understaffed by hundreds of posts, with only slow progress in filling the vacancies.
In 2023, during debates on revised planning legislation, the body that represents city and county managers said that local authorities countrywide needed 541 more planners to keep up with existing demand – and would need more to fulfil an expanded role under the new Planning and Development Act.
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In 2023, the Department of Housing sanctioned 101, of which 86 have been recruited to date. A further 112 were sanctioned by the department in January of this year, but none have yet been appointed.
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It means that of the 541 new posts sought by local authority managers two years ago to meet existing demand, just 15 per cent – or less than one in six – have been filled.
Government efforts are under way to train more planners and to attract qualified planners from abroad, though progress has been slow
“Lack of staffing is the single biggest reason why planning decisions are taking so long,” said Sinn Féin housing spokesman Eoin Ó Broin, who submitted a parliamentary question on the issue.
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“The failure of Government to put in place an adequate multiannual workforce plan for council planning sections and the Bord [Pleanála] is resulting in lengthy delays to housing projects as well as critical infrastructure and renewable energy projects.
“The Government desperately tried to blame everyone else for delays in the planning system, but the simple reality is that without adequate staffing, councils and the board simply cannot cope with the volume of work they have. And this is before any of the new functions in the controversial Planning and Development Act have been enacted.”
He said that Sinn Féin’s housing plan had made provision for an additional 450 planning staff for local authorities on top of the Government’s additional sanction, as well as an extra 50 staff for An Bord Pleanála and three more High Court judges.
In his reply to the parliamentary question, Minister for Housing James Browne said that his department “is currently working on a number of measures to increase staffing levels in the local government planning sector ... These supports include the provision of staffing resources and expertise to enable planning authorities to perform their functions efficiently and effectively.”
The news comes in advance of a meeting of the Cabinet committee on housing this week, where several controversial issues are expected to be discussed by the Taoiseach, Tánaiste and key Ministers.
It is expected that they will agree to expand the role of the Land Development Agency (LDA) to include facilitating private sector development on lands it controls, plans to strengthen the LDA’s power to take land owned by State agencies and also to expand its remit beyond cities to towns where housing developments on State lands could be located.
The committee is also expected to push ahead with a process to recruit someone to head the Housing Activation Office – the so-called housing tsar – with potential candidates understood to have been identified.
