The High Court has declined to quash An Bord Pleanála’s decision that the change from furniture manufacturing and associated storage to commercial self-storage at 132a Richmond Road, Dublin 3, was a material change of use and was not exempted development.
In a judgment delivered on 28 March 2022, Ms Justice Siobhán Phelan rejected Brendan Stanley’s judicial review challenge to the Board’s decision of 21 January 2020. The challenge focused on whether the Board and its inspector gave adequate reasons for finding the change material in planning terms.
The court said the Board’s function on a referral under section 5 of the Planning and Development Act 2000 was to decide whether development or exempted development had occurred. It had no enforcement role. Separate enforcement proceedings against Stanley concerning alleged non-compliance with an enforcement notice remained pending before the District Court and had been adjourned from time to time.
The inspector identified potential implications for traffic, servicing and car parking on a busy, relatively narrow road, and for neighbouring amenity, but did not explain their nature or scale in detail. Justice Phelan said the record should identify the change of use, its planning effects and the scale of those effects. She found that the inspector and Board had identified the change and potential planning concerns, but that the inspector’s report merely asserted that those concerns were “quite evident”.
However, the judge considered the decision alongside the inspector’s report and material on the Board’s file. That material included the refusal of a 2012 retention application for car sales, where planning reports had raised concerns about traffic, parking, servicing and residential amenity. The judge cautioned that concerns about car sales could not automatically be transferred to self-storage. She found, though, that the file described the new business as offering access to numerous storage units 24 hours a day, deliveries and removals, and that no evidence indicated comparable third-party access during the former furniture-making use.
Justice Phelan concluded that the reasons could and should have been stated better, but were sufficiently clear to a reasonable observer with access to the planning file. She found a logical basis for the Board’s conclusion that the new use raised similar planning concerns and was sufficiently material to require a planning application. The judgment did not determine whether permission for the current use would be granted.
The court declined the order of certiorari sought to quash the Board’s decision. The judge proposed an order for the respondent’s costs against Stanley, to be adjudicated if not agreed, and proposed no order for the first notice party’s costs. The parties were directed to exchange and file written submissions on costs or other consequential orders within 14 days; absent submissions, orders would be drawn in the proposed terms.