Draft housing strategy 'confirms excessive rezoning' - planning alliance
KILDARE GENERAL, 6 July 2001: by Bill Trapman. Proposed rezonings for Kilcock, Maynooth, Celbridge, Kill and Clane require to be dropped from the final drafts of their proposed development plans if the Draft Housing Strategy for Co Kildare is to be adopted says the Kildare Planning Alliance.
The Draft Housing Strategy being prepared by Kildare County Council, and currently available for public comment, estimates that 13,540 new households will be formed in the County by 2006. If realised, the KPA says this would represent an increase of almost 47,000 people on the 1996 Census figure – a huge influx with major planning implications.
“The consultants employed to plan for the availability of housing for this increase have however discovered that there is already an adequate supply of zoned lands in the County to cater for 13,960 households,” says John Sweeney of the KPA.
“This revelation confirms what Kildare Planning Alliance has been alerting the people of Kildare to for several years, namely that excessive rezoning is being undertaken by the Council. The consequences of excessive rezoning are that the growth in population experienced exceeds the rate at which infrastructure can cope, resulting in a steady decline in the quality of life for all Kildare’s residents."
The KPA also says that the Draft Housing Strategy also discovered a further 118 hectares of unused residentially zoned lands owned by one of the three local authorities (Kildare Co Council, Naas UDC, Athy UDC). “This revelation means that the amount of land available for residential development is considerably more than was hitherto believed. The existence of this 118 hectares would provide an adequate means of supplying the social and affordable housing so badly needed by the county. Why zone more if this is not being used? This has always been a basic principle of the Kildare Planning Alliance and also constitutes good planning practice.”
John Sweeney also says the Draft Strategy makes no references to the huge housing supply now emerging as once-off rural housing in Co Kildare. Yet on a national scale this rural sector accounts for 40% of new starts last year. Neither does it make any attempt to quantify the housing supply provided by the rented sector. Both of these aspects further reduce the need for more rezoning in the urban areas.
The Draft Housing Strategy, if adopted, will be incorporated as an amendment into the Co. Plan. Kildare Planning Alliance warns that this can only be done if previous unrealistic assumptions in the existing Plan concerning population targets for the towns and villages of Kildare are revised downwards.
©2001/knn