Treat rogue developers with contempt – Lawlor
DEVELOPERS who failed to finish housing estates should be dealt with in the same contemptuous manner that they treated the residents they left in the lurch, a councillor told a local authority meeting.
Cllr. George Lawlor was speaking during a discussion on the taking in charge by the Council of certain housing estates in Wexford and he said builders applying for new planning permissions after failing to finish previous schemes, should not be accommodated.
‘Some developers have left us with estates that are not finished. They blindly walked away and left even basic things unfinished. We have a policy in housing that anyone who has a record won’t get a home. We should have the same in relation to planning. There is one estate where it’s taking forever to get a few street lights’, he said.
‘Can I ask that these developers be treated with the same contempt that they’re showing home-owners. If they have blotted their copy books, we should treat them accordingly’.
Deputy Chief Executive Tony Larkin said the Council had sorted out 200 housing estates which were left unfinished during the property crash and spent a lot of taxpayers’ money in the process.
He said the Council would be ‘very unsympathetic’ to the same developers landing back with new applications after leaving the local authority to sort out their problems but the local authority has to work within a legal framework..
‘In general, where we have had the opportunity, we have ensured that the sins of the past hafve been visited on the developer through certain conditions and developments that are not completed will go to planning enforcement.’ He told Cllr. Lawlor that if he provided him privately with the names of developers who are not compliant, he would take a look at them.