Forty per cent of Cork City Council’s planning decisions overturned on appeal

By Peter McCarthy, Corkman

Four out of 10 of Cork City Council’s planning decisions were overturned by the appeals board in 2024 while for Cork County Council the figure was three in 10, a new report shows.

The figures are contained in a report by the National Oversight and Audit Commission (NOAC), which examined the performance of the country’s 31 local authorities across a range of areas in 2024.

Forty Cork City Council planning decisions were appealed to An Coimisiún Pleanála during 2024 and in 60 per cent of cases the local authority’s decision was upheld. In the case of Cork County Council, 146 cases were appealed and 71 per cent of decisions were upheld.

The report found that the local authorities with the highest number of planning decisions confirmed on appeal in 2024 were Galway city (97.5 per cent), Kilkenny (88 per cent) and Kildare (87 per cent). The lowest were Donegal (54 per cent), Leitrim (50 per cent) and Laois, which had just 12pc of its planning decisions confirmed by the board.

The average confirmation rate of planning decisions, with or without modifications to the original permission, across the country was 74pc. No local authority had 100 per cent of its planning decisions upheld on appeal.

An Coimisiún Pleanála, which was formerly known as An Bord Pleanála, received a sharp increase in the number of appeals last year. In 2024 it received 2,258 appeals, compared to 1,713 in 2023 and 1,047 in 2022.

Nationally, Cork city and county had the second and third highest number of new buildings notified to local authorities in 2024. For Cork city the figure was 4,444 buildings while Cork county had 3,928, exceeded only by Fingal (7,083).

The NOAC report also found that Cork city and county were two of the seven local authorities that didn’t meet the minimum inspection rates for new buildings in 2024. The Code of Practice for Inspecting and Certifying Buildings and Works sets a minimum of 12-15 per cent.

In Cork city only 6.8 per cent of new buildings were inspected during 2024, putting it third from the bottom among the country’s local authorities, ahead of Louth and Clare. The inspection rate in Cork county was just under 11 per cent.

The report points out that the government's development contribution waiver resulted in a far higher number of commencement notices than usual, many of which were received at the end of the year, meaning that inspections in some cases could not be carried out in that year. The development waiver was a temporary scheme in 2023-24 aimed at stimulating housing construction.