Planning Levies & Contributions €15k excessive? abolished next year? staged payments?

S

Shamrock

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Hi folks, not too sure if this has been discussed recently but any views on the above fees. We have planning for a build in DLRCOO and fees are €15000 which seems extremly high.

I was chatting to somone who heard that these may be abolished next year as lots of people aren't paying them? Is there any substance to this?

Finally, do councils accept stage payments over a certain period? Many thanks for comments/ suggestions.
 
Cant comment on if they will go or not, the issue seems to be that there does not seem to be any way of enforcing payment. They will hardly demolish....
 
I seriously doubt they will abolish them - if anything, they may increase them!

Regarding stage payments, if you contact the Bonds & Contributions section of the Council they will be able to tell you. I certainly know that some Councils will accept payment in stages (by prior agreement) and others will not. Not sure about DLRCC.
 
I referred to high Council charges in a recent post.

They are certainly a disincentive to carry out development.

Councils abandoning levies in the middle of a recession - doubt it.

Councils accepting stage payments - that could be a fruitful subject for discussion.

ONQ.

[broken link removed]

All advice on AAM is remote from the situation and cannot be relied upon as a defence or support - in and of itself - should legal action be taken.
Competent legal and building professionals should be asked to advise in Real Life with rights to inspect and issue reports on the matters at hand.
 
Thanks very much for the prompt replies. It was very wishful thinking on my part to think fees may have/will be reduced. Is there any information available on different fees for each council as I presume the €15k figure would be much lower in other areas?
 
I am not aware of any centralised/comprehensive list of levies/contributions county by county. Are you thinking of shopping around or moving your planning to a different county? Only joking.

E15K would be typical for a new build/one off house in many parts of the country.

In one way you could consider yourself lucky. I came across a (very very) large house extension in Fingal CC area where, because it was not a new house (i.e. an extension), contributions were levied per m.sq. and they amounted to E 23K. The applicant appealed to An Bord Pleanala (ABP) and ABP judged that the Council had mis-calculated the levies and increased them to E 27K!

In that case the applicant tried to argue that because the extension to the house was larger than the original house that they should have been levied no more than the levies would be for a new house (in the case of Fingal this is also E 15K).
 

Don't assume - check.

The Planning Development Contribution Schemes for Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council are listed [broken link removed].
The Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council Development Contribution Scheme (2010-2017), 2009 is effective in respect of decisions made from 1st January 2010.

As an aside, I got told a horror story this afternoon about one house where permission was sought and granted in Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council.
Got hit for the €15K levy plus a levy for the completion of the M50 plus a levy for the Luas Line Extension - something like €54K in total!
Blew the young couple's prospective €200K budget they had out of the water - they couldn't build the house.

Its time for the level of these levies to be reviewed - they are restricting development in a recession.


ONQ.

[broken link removed]

All advice on AAM is remote from the situation and cannot be relied upon as a defence or support - in and of itself - should legal action be taken.
Competent legal and building professionals should be asked to advise in Real Life with rights to inspect and issue reports on the matters at hand.
 
Fingal County Council charge 143euro per square metre! A new house build of 25,000 sq ft will be charged over 27,000euro in develpoment contribution levies which would include a small reduction for a biocycle I think.

In my opinion, it's a crazy amount of money to have to pay especially in these times but there's no way around it!
 
onq said:
Its time for the level of these levies to be reviewed - they are restricting development in a recession.
Click to expand...
Do we really need to be encouraging development, given the vast amounts of empty property in the country?

hastalavista said:
Cant comment on if they will go or not, the issue seems to be that there does not seem to be any way of enforcing payment. They will hardly demolish....
Click to expand...
I guess they'll just do what the NPPR folks do when you don't pay that bill - they'll make sure that they'll get their pound of flesh (plus heavy penalties or interest) when the house eventually gets sold.
 
boomboom,

Please check your figures.

25,000 sq ft is a mansion of 2,322.56 sq.m

It would cost approximately €5,000,000 to build at €200 per sq ft.

The levy would be €332,125 at a rate of €143 per sq m.

I agree that the levy is outrageous.


ONQ.

[broken link removed]

All advice on AAM is remote from the situation and cannot be relied upon as a defence or support - in and of itself - should legal action be taken.
Competent legal and building professionals should be asked to advise in Real Life with rights to inspect and issue reports on the matters at hand.
 
Sorry Onq I added an extra zero there by mistake, oops!

I was suppose to refer to a house size of 2500 sq ft.
 
Its easy to make that mistake, but I had to check to be sure.

I've designed and built a 15,000 sq.ft. house for a client and there is one 34,000 sq ft house in Ireland, apparently, so you can't be too clever about it
 
I know we are paying just over 5k in carlow. It came down a couple of hundred from last year as it linked to build inflation index. I would say there is no chance of these fees going. What bugged us is that although these is a fee of 1,350 for water in the contributions there was no mention of the further 2k they just asked us for to connect to it!

As for the stage payments I can tell you in CW they will take in proposals and work with you on this. We have ours over 6 stage payments done at points in the build that were agreeable. You do get a sense that they are maybe afraid they will be last to be paid. I can tell you you will not get water connection without some arrangement been in place for fees.
 

Thanks Troy for the response. It pays (literally) to live outside Dublin then? So from above when you factor in water and gas connections etc figure will be more close to 20k? That sounds crazy.
 
Its not Dublin per se, although yes, Dublin tends to be more expensive.

Any local authority can vote in a schedule of planning levies based on infrastructure supporting the area in which the house is to be built.


ONQ.

[broken link removed]

All advice on AAM is remote from the situation and cannot be relied upon as a defence or support - in and of itself - should legal action be taken.
Competent legal and building professionals should be asked to advise in Real Life with rights to inspect and issue reports on the matters at hand.
 
We got planning on friday and a 10k bill on Monday. Levies. We're on Carlow/Wicklow border and someone in Carlow had sizeably less for same size house within 3 miles of where we built.
 
Hi mummol.
Thanks for the update.

Sounds like what I was saying.
Is the other house in an adjoining County?


ONQ.

[broken link removed]

All advice on AAM is remote from the situation and cannot be relied upon as a defence or support - in and of itself - should legal action be taken.
Competent legal and building professionals should be asked to advise in Real Life with rights to inspect and issue reports on the matters at hand.
 
Hi Docarch - where does it say that in Fingal it's 15K for a new residential build?

I can only see the price per metre quoted - 143 euro!!

We've put our planning application in the paper on Friday and 15K development contribution to Fingal County Council would be miles better than a price per square metre!

TIA
 
Docarch may have been speaking in terms of average new builds.

The Fingal Levies are [broken link removed]
The explanatory booklet is [broken link removed]

Class of Public Infrastructural Development
€ per square metre of Residential Development

Class 1: Roads infrastructure & facilities.....................€69.84
Class 2: Water & Drainage infrastructure & facilities......€49.91
Class 3: Community & Parks facilities & amenities.........€23.25
Total of Contributions Payable................................€143.00

I don't have the site owner's ability to post tables here so I hope this is legible enough.
These rates should come down commensurately with the reduction in house prices in Dublin.


ONQ.

[broken link removed]

All advice on AAM is remote from the situation and cannot be relied upon as a defence or support - in and of itself - should legal action be taken.
Competent legal and building professionals should be asked to advise in Real Life with rights to inspect and issue reports on the matters at hand.
 
Thanks ONQ

I hope I was not misleading! At one stage levies for a typical house in Fingal was around E15k. Some councils in the past capped the levies for new houses no matter what size the house was (this tended to be in the region of E15k). However, in this economic climate, councils have changed their contribution levels and parameters over the years.

At one stage levies in some councils were linked to the Tender Price Index (TDI) so say if you were levied E10k as part of your palnning permission in 2005 and you started building in 2006, if the TDI had (for example) increased 10%, you paid E11k. Once the TDI started falling, this link was dropped very quickly!

I once queried this reversal with Dun Laoghaire Rathdown CC and the lady in the contributions section just laughed down the phone and said where else do you think we are going to get money!
 
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