Planning Bill: Or how OFMdFM dropped the ball on their end of the Downing Street economic pact?

So let’s join the dots a little on yesterday’s crash landing of the planning bill. [Focus people, focus – Ed]. This was the bill intended to fix set up the Enterprise Zones that were so critical to the Downing Street package of cash agreed just before the G8 with David Cameron. That was on 14th of June this year. By 24th and 25th June, OFMdFM had scrambled together two amendments which radically altered the bill the SDLP Minister for the …

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High Court rules NI Environment Minister’s official statements to Assembly unlawful

The BBC reports that the High Court has ruled that the then NI Environment Minister, the DUP’s Sammy Wilson, unlawfully changed planning policy in two ministerial statements to the Assembly in May and June of last year.  Mr Justice Treacy ordered the ministerial statements to be quashed.  From the BBC report …lawyers for the Department of the Environment argued the statements merely offered clarification and guidance within an existing and well established policy framework and did not amount to a change …

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