City Council rents building with expired planning permission
Galway City Council has come under fire for failing to enforce planning regulations on an unauthorised office building located right next door to City Hall . . . and where the Council itself is the tenant.
The Council’s Transport and Infrastructure department is renting the Grammar School annexe building (Yeats College) beside City Hall, where around 30 of its staff are based.
In 2007, permission was granted to landlord Terry Fahy for a temporary change from educational to office use on what was an extension to Yeats College for a period of five years.
The change of use permission was approved for a further five-year period in 2012, and expired on August 1, 2017.
A further planning application was lodged on May 1 of this year ‘for retention and renewal’ to continue the change of use from educational to office use. Permission was approved last week.
However, planning watchdog An Taisce made a submission to the Council highlighting that “an almost year-long status of an unauthorised ‘change of use’ exists to a structure located within the curtilage of a protected structure and therefore would be considered a lack of development control and enforcement in our opinion”. This is a preview only. To read the rest of this article, see this week's Galway City Tribune. Buy a digital edition of this week's paper here.
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