Galway City Council had one of the highest rates of appealed planning decisions in the country last year, according to a new report from An Bord Pleanála.
According to the Board’s Annual Report for 2018, there were 378 planning decisions made last year by the City Council.
Of these, 42 were appealed (11.1%), which was the fourth-highest rate of challenged decisions in the country.
The highest rate was in the Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council area with 15.9% of decisions appealed; Dublin City Council at 15.4% and Cork City Council at 12.6%.
The report also shows that in Galway City, there were 37 decisions made by the Board last year – 12 Council decisions were upheld, 16 had planning conditions varied and nine were overturned.
The 42 appeals lodged represented 2.7% of all appeals nationally.
Meanwhile, more than one third of rulings by An Bord Pleanala last year on appeals in County Galway resulted in the Council’s decision being overturned.
The Board’s report shows that 21 decisions from the County Council were overturned.
In 2018, the County Council made 1,626 planning decisions – 81 of these were appealed (5%), which equated to 4% of all local authority planning decisions nationally which were appealed.
Decisions were reached on 60 cases (there may have been a carry-over of decisions pending from 2017, and some from 2018 may not have been made until this year).
A breakdown of the decided cases shows that 14 had the local authority decisions upheld; 25 had decisions varied and 21 had decisions overturned.
According to the Board, appeals were dealt with in an average of 19.5 weeks last year, down from 23.3 weeks recorded in 2017. The Board has an objective of deciding appeals within 18 weeks.
Nationally, there were 28,785 planning decisions, of which 2,028 were appealed (a rate of 7%). A total of 1,806 decisions were reached, of which 434 were upheld, 957 had conditions varied and 415 overturned.
