Northern Ireland environment minister Mart Durkan has withdrawn the administration’s Planning Bill.
This unexpected move was announced by the minister in a statement to the North Ireland Assembly on 22 October.
Durkan explained that he was scrapping the proposed legislation because amendments to the Bill backed by the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Fein risked breaching the European Convention on Human Rights.
At issue were moves to limit the right to judicially review certain planning decisions, either by the administration or local councils.
There were also legal worries over potential problems with EU environmental legislation in respect of new proposals for so-called economically significant planning zones (ESPZs)
In addition, Durkan made it was clear that, like his predecessor Alex Attwood, he was unhappy about proposals that would have meant the first and deputy prime ministers would have had the power to set up such zones.
He claimed that these proposals were a bid to grab ‘existing planning powers from my Department but also an attempt to disempower future local government’.
Durkan, who is a member of the Social Democratic and Labour Party, told the Northern Ireland Assembly that he hoped to publish by the end of the year a draft of a single planning statement, which aims to condense planning guidance in Northern Ireland into one document.
Access the statement at: LINK
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