Q1 Topic: The Current Difficulties Facing the Housing Sector in Ireland And Some Practical Solutions to Addressing This Complex Issue.
It is abundantly clear that concerted action needs to be taken to address the country’s current urban housing crisis, and we know that we need to build 25,000 to 35,000 houses annually in order to meet market demand.
The recently appointed Minister For Housing, Planning and Local Government, Simon Coveney TD, has expressed his intention to fast-track the planning process to deliver additional private and public sector housing. This includes the creation of a new Special Delivery Unit in his department, requiring larger housing schemes to apply directly to An Bord Pleanála for planning permission. This approach is similar to the existing process for Strategic Infrastructure Developments, which the Minister plans to expand on in his forthcoming Housing Action Plan.
As a professional town planner, with more than 20 years’ experience in the UK and Ireland, I am not convinced that fast-tracking the planning process is the right solution to this complex issue. This type of approach runs the risk of excluding consultation and engagement with stakeholders, which is crucial to the planning process and to delivering sustainable developments and neighbourhoods.
Urgent Need To Streamline Policy And Legislative Environment
What we must do as a matter of urgency is streamline planning policy and the legislative environment. As things stand, residential planning applications are subject to a myriad of lengthy and confusing guidelines, many of which may become statutory requirements as part of the Planning and Development (Amendment) Act 2015.
Legislation also needs to be streamlined and it’s unfortunate that the consolidated, amended version of the Planning & Development Acts 2000 remains unofficial and not up-to-date, i.e. all other Planning and Development Acts, including recent legislation, still needs to be cross referenced when preparing a planning application. By comparison, the policy environment for one-off rural housing is relatively uncomplicated, and the level of applications for such housing around the country speaks for itself.
The obvious solution to our current policy and legislative issues would be to introduce one National Planning Guidance document for urban housing developments and one consolidated Planning and Development Act.
Planning Policy Must Take Regional And Local Considerations Into Account
The appropriateness of housing density must be allowed for within statutory planning policy and legislation. In other words, the level of housing density in a particular location must be appropriate to that location. The Planning Development (Amendment) Act, 2015 currently over-rides local planning policy in favour of national policy. This needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency so that national planning policy is not exclusively Dublin centric.
I am not an advocate for urban sprawl, but there has to be a realistic approach to the delivery of housing density in order to increase supply, particularly in locations outside Dublin. We have many examples of inappropriate and poorly designed high-density residential schemes, blindly following policy guidelines to the detriment of other important urban design factors.
The solution to delivering appropriate planning policy is tapping into local knowledge. There should be a local housing planning team for each priority settlement in each county (as identified in Core Strategies). The team would include a planner (as team lead), an architect, an engineer, a transport planner, an estates engineer, a Part V officer, development contributions, a heritage officer, and a relevant Irish Water contact. This team would work with prospective developers to advance proposals through the system, streamlining the process and delivering the required housing stock. However, this will need proper resourcing to work effectively.
It would also be helpful if Core Strategies for each county were fully aligned with those of the various Prescribed Bodies, including Transport Infrastructure Ireland, Irish Water, An Taisce and Government departments with responsibility for Heritage and the Environment. For example, it has taken 10 years to adopt a Masterplan for the towns of Midleton and Carrigtwohill in Co. Cork, as identified in the Core Strategy for County Cork. However, there is still uncertainty over how infrastructure will be funded and delivered.
In relation to housing supply, in my opinion we need to consider how existing, under-utilised holiday home developments might contribute to the provision of additional housing, particularly those within walking and cycling distance of town centres. With moderate amendments, these existing dwellings could make a timely contribution to the housing supply, providing a sustainable housing solution in urban areas.
Key Learning from the UK Experience
We could look to recent UK experience in attempting to resolve the current lack of housing supply. For instance, a change of use from office to residential development in certain areas in the UK is determined to be ‘an exempted development’ – i.e. no planning permission is required. This could be considered here for vacant office, industrial and commercial premises in priority locations. There would, of course, have to be conditions and limitations set on the exemption, such as issues to do with contamination risks and flooding risks. This could be aligned with the current Living City tax incentive scheme for the refurbishment or conversion of City Centre buildings in each of Ireland’s main cities.
Consideration could also be given to widening the ‘exempted development’ regulations, as was recently mooted in the UK, to include the demolition of vacant office, industrial and commercial premises and the building of new residential developments in priority locations.