CHAIRMAN of the Environment Committee in the Assembly, Patsy McGlone, has expressed his disappointment at the latest statement on PPS14 by Environment Minister Arlene Foster in the Assembly last week.
"The statement by the Minister today is very disappointing and will cause great concern in rural communities across the North. The Minister has done little more than confirm that she will be taking responsibility for this matter in her statement. This will be of little comfort to the many people who find themselves in a planning limbo", said Mr McGlone.
He continued, "The result of today's statement is that PPS14 will continue to apply to planning applications submitted after 16th March, 2006, until the Minister and her department have developed new policies. In reality, this means that PPS14 will remain for another six months, until replaced by hopefully a much more appropriate one for farming communities and rural dwellers. I am particularly concerned that she has applied the policy retrospectively to March last year. This is especially bad for those whose application was turned down for PPS14 reasons alone – such as farm viability, farm retirement, replacement or infill sites. I feel very strongly that it is unfair to have issued refusal documents to those people under a policy later determined as 'unlawful', yet the only recourse is to take further legal action – those cases should all be re-opened by the Minister and reversed.
PPS14 was a burning issue for all the parties at the election and many politicians promised to act decisively in bringing it to an end.
The SDLP MLA concluded, "Prolonging the issue should not be an option. A Programme for Government Committee submitted a detailed report on this issue in the aftermath of the election. The Minister should be taking on these considerations now as a means of moving this issue forward. Stretching the issue out for a further six months is not the most acceptable solution; in fact it will only lead to greater problems for planning applicants and planning service in the time to come."
