NI appeals system faces meltdown, claims leading politician

Northern Ireland's planning appeals system is on the verge of "meltdown", a senior politician in the province has claimed.

That is the view of Ulster Unionist MLA Ian Paisley Junior who has publicly warned that the system was putting jobs and business opportunities at risk because of the backlog of determinations.

A spokesman for the Planning Appeals Commission (PAC) confirmed a backlog of 2,847 cases and agreed the service was under pressure but insisted that "meltdown is not a phrase we would use to describe the present state of play".

PAC chief commissioner Marie Campbell has pointed out that although the organisation issued a record 1,065 appeal decisions during 2007/08 "it was unable to make a significant impact on its heavy backlog of appeals awaiting decision".

She said that the commission was continuing to receive an exceptionally high number of appeals, many of which were very complex.

However, she also stressed that if current trends on appeals handling remained the same and provided additional staff resources were retained "the commission aims to reduce the backlog significantly in the coming year".

Paisley claimed that many appeals were facing a two-year wait for determination. Campbell conceded that long delays in determining appeals would remain a feature of the province's planning system for some time.

She blamed some of the problem on the large number of objections lodged against area plans across the Province.

Roger Milne

3 July 2008