70,000 Householders Living In Unfinished Housing Estates

16th October 2006, Press Release

Catherine Murphy, TD (Ind) has today termed the fact that 89% of housing estates, whose planning permission expired over two years ago have not been taken in charge, as disastrous. She has called on Government to step up efforts to have this crisis resolved in order that those purchasing new homes have some certainty that their estates will have basic services such as roads, footpaths, green spaces, and public lighting. "When people buy a house they presume they’re buying the whole package; roads, footpaths, and green spaces. But there is an awful lot of people out there feeling cheated at finding they’re still waiting for these things years after moving in. The Government has to ensure that homeowners are afforded adequate consumer protection so they don’t have to spend years chasing developers and Local Authorities to get, what should be provided from day 1."

Murphy’s comments came as a result of information provided to her via parliamentary reply by the Minister for the Environment, Mr Dick Roche. Other statistics that arose in the same response highlighted that of the 2169 housing estates whose planning permission expired more than two years ago, and so were due for taking in charge, only 248, or 11% had undergone this process. Furthermore 598 estates nationally, containing a total of 29599 houses, are due for taking in charge by the end of 2006.

Murphy concluded in highlighting that these figures were limited to estates that were at least 7 years old, and so the huge numbers of newer estates are not accounted for. "In light of the serious building boom we’ve seen in recent years, I can only forecast that we’re going to see this problem get worse before it gets better unless Government takes drastic action to end it. Local Authorities in growing counties are drastically under funded and don’t have the resources to clear the backlog of estates to be taken in charge, let alone tackle the newer estates. Setting up a dedicated fund to tackle the taking in charge issue may be one way that Central Government can help Local Authorities in resolving this crisis." – Murphy

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Posted by catherinemurphy on October 16, 2006. Filed under Latest News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.