Dick Roche (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)

Management companies operate at present for the majority of apartment developments, for certain other higher density developments, particularly those with a mix of designs, but very rarely for a very small number of standard housing developments. Generally speaking, the role of management companies is to maintain the common property, including buildings, sewers, water pipes, public lighting, roads and footpaths in such estates.

Once housing developments are taken in charge, it is the local authority's responsibility to maintain public infrastructure such as roads, footpaths, sewers, water mains and public lighting. The existence of a management company should not override the legal obligation on developers to complete estates, and, where required by the planning permission, to maintain estates until they are taken in charge. Local authorities are obliged under section 180 of the Planning and Development Act 2000 to begin the procedures to take in charge the public services of housing estates once these are completed to a satisfactory standard, where they are requested to do so by the developer or a majority of the residents of the housing development. This legal obligation is unaffected by the existence or otherwise of a management company. In individual instances, of course, house owners may prefer that the responsibility for all services in their estate remains vested in the management company, which they control.

Section 34 of the Planning and Development Act 2000 introduced a number of provisions designed to ensure all housing estates were finished as soon as possible, maintained to a satisfactory standard for the benefit of the people living in them and taken in charge by local authorities. The section enables planning authorities to require adequate security to be provided by developers and to require estates to be finished within a reasonably short period. In addition, section 34 recognised the common practice of establishing management companies, control of which is transferred to the owners of the housing units, to maintain or manage residential developments.

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Along with the requirement on local authorities to take estates in charge under section 180 of the Act, these provisions should ensure that the historical problem of people living in unfinished or poorly managed housing estates for years will not occur in future.

These new provisions of planning legislation are framework ones and individual planning authorities must make their own judgment, based on local circumstances and policies, about how and to what extent to use them in particular cases. These provisions should not be used, however, to transfer responsibility for public infrastructure in housing estates to the residents. I am confident good solutions can be developed in this way and that these solutions should be most appropriately addressed at local authority level.

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