At the beginning of the month, the housing sector witnessed new plans that aim to reform the country’s tough building regulations. The primary purpose of the legislation’s “spring cleaning” is to foster the construction of new homes. The expected changes will affect the planning permissions in order to encourage developers to build new residences.

A “use it or lose it” clause will be assigned to the planning permissions. The government will be more involved in overseeing the process. The local authorities should ensure that the construction is executed in a timely manner.  The standard building permissions are for five years period, but they can be prolonged. With the new rules, the building process should be carried out without any delays. The monitoring authorities will have the power to cut the time for the development of new homes, if there is no clear reason for the delay.

The government intends to review the building regulations because of the inability of the sector to meet the increasing housing demand.  The problem is in the huge delays of the construction work caused by the severe legislation, primarily by the certification procedures. The process is sometimes intentionally slowed down by the builders who hope for increase in the price. These two factors add enormous value to the building.

The individuals bear enormous part of the construction costs which includes the after builders clearance procedure. Currently, they should pay tens of thousands on engineering and architecture services. The rigid financial burden is a major turn off for the aspiring home owners.

The existing laws are disproportionate in their essence. They are particularly designed for large – scale developments, but they strongly affect the small – scale construction and the self – building practices. The result is a drop in the new projects.  Because of the high demand in the urban areas, the prices of estates have sky rocketed. 

After clearance and sorting out these issues, the costs associated with building a home will be minimized. The expected reforms will be especially beneficial for the rural regions in Ireland. There are a number of undeveloped areas in the country that is why, the vacant sites will be taxed annually 3% of their value. The number can rise to 6% in sites with population above 3000 people.

10 % of all estates in new development will be bought by the local authorities and used for social housing. In order to make the development finance more appealing to the lenders, these areas will be bought before the start of construction works.

After the major obstacles are being identified, cleaning them out is the next logical step. The new regulations will decrease significantly the costs related to construction and will increase the number of new projects. The series of changes in the legislations are expected to be officially published after the Easter holidays.