Letter of the Day

Good planning will lead to better, more cost-effective and sustainable housing

It’s a myth that complying with national planning policy is in conflict with policies to address the housing crisis

Letter of the Day
Letter of the Day
Wed Dec 11 2024 - 06:00

Sir,

In a front-page article on November 22nd (“Parties block plans for hundreds of new homes”), The Irish Times reported on a decision by a cross-party group of Louth county councillors across a number of parties to reverse a decision to zone lands for housing on the grounds that the development of these lands would not support sequential development and lacked water infrastructure.

Rather than praising this rare example of support by elected members in a local authority for the national planning policies set out in the National Planning Framework (NPF), your correspondent says this decision raises questions about their parties’ election promises to tackle the housing crisis.

I now note that The Irish Times has returned to the same topic in the Business section (December 9th.)

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Again, the decision is not seen as supportive of best planning practice but is contrasted with the stated policy of the main parties to “build, build, build”.

There is an urgent need to address this repeated myth that, somehow, complying with national planning policy is in conflict with policies to address the housing crisis.

The NPF, published in 2018 with a review currently under way, seeks to promote the compact growth of our towns and villages where existing services, including retail, education, public transport and utilities, are more generally available.

It was placed on a statutory basis and the Office of the Planning Regulator was established to ensure that these key strategies were not ignored as had been the experience with the previous National Spatial Strategy during the Celtic Tiger era, when we did really “build build build”, with resultant unserviced and ghost estates to be rectified later at the taxpayers’ expense.

The NPF states that lands should not be zoned for housing if these are unserviced (“tiered development”) or if the lands are remote from the urban area and its services, leading to car dependency (“sequential growth”).

I applaud the Louth councillors for supporting these planning policies, seeking to address the many negative impacts of building houses in the wrong place.

Unfortunately, such decisions are very much the exception.

All too frequently, our elected members and local authority officials are deciding, often at the behest of developers, to zone lands for development in clear breach of the policies set out in the NPF.

The OPR’s regulatory oversight has also failed to adequately address or reverse these many decisions.

This is not the way to address the housing crisis.

Good planning will lead to better, more cost-effective and sustainable housing. – Yours etc.

ADRIAN CONWAY,

Chartered Engineer,

Kilcloon,

Co Meath.