Planners Stress Need for More Forward Planning to Deliver NDP
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
The Irish Planning Institute (IPI) today (Tue) welcomed the emphasis in the new National Development Plan (NDP) on the delivery of the National Spatial Strategy and also the attempts to reduce the problem of “infrastructure deficit”.
However, the Institute – which represents planners working in public and private practice - warned that there must be more forward planning and co-ordination between the zoning of land and the timely availability of adequate infrastructure otherwise there was a risk that the worrying pattern of outward sprawl of population in the Greater Dublin Area, would continue.
“The re-affirmed explicit commitment to the principles contained in the National Spatial Strategy, in particular the concentration on urban centres with a designated gateway status, was crucially important in the light of the earlier indications that we were drifting away from the Strategy”, said IPI President, Mr Henk van der Kamp.
He said that such indications were clear from the population figures revealed by the 2006 census results and the Government plans to decentralise civil servants to towns without gateway or hub status.
“This new National Development plan gives a clear commitment to the gateway designated urban centres and this is welcomed by the Institute,” he stated.
Mr van der Kamp added: “It is crucially important that we grasp the opportunity offered by the current high population growth and house building programmes, to deliver the type of Ireland that will best serve current and future generations of Irish people as well as the environment and the economy. Uncontrolled dispersed development either in the form of long distance commuter based sprawl in the Greater Dublin Area or one-off housing in rural areas may be regretted in years to come.”
The recently documented under-supply of housing in the four Dublin local authority areas has been attributed to problems of lack of coordination between the zoning of land and the availability of adequate infrastructure (in particular public transport, water and community facilities) to serve new housing developments.
“The experience with the previous NDP has shown that it is not sufficient to indicate investment programmes without paying attention to the integration between the zoning of land for houses and the delivery of adequate infrastructure. In too many cases, residential development projects falter because of a lack of forward planning and this has contributed to the pattern of outward sprawl in the Greater Dublin area and long commuting distances”. In this regard, he noted that the current embargo on the number of planners working in local authorities should be lifted.
The President of the Irish Planning Institute further noted that the NDP makes a significant attempt to reduce the problem of the “infrastructure deficit” in the country. This was done through the announcement of a range of infrastructure projects in the areas of public transport, energy and waste infrastructure.
In this regard he noted that the Strategic Infrastructure Act was now part of the planning system and would play an important part in the delivery of these infrastructure programmes. While the Institute had said that the fasttrack procedures should only be acceptable where a project has been identified in a plan that has gone through a public consultation process, the Institute was very satisfied that the implementation of the Strategic Infrastructure Act was in the hands of An Bord Pleanala, which has an excellent track record in the Irish planning system, instead of a separate new body as was originally suggested.
“For an effective delivery of the projects announced today in the NDP it is important that all planning documents, including the National Spatial Strategy, Regional Planning Guidelines and City & County Development Plans, indicate locations of preferred sites for strategic landfill and incinerator projects and that the current ‘project-led’ planning process be replaced by a more ‘plan-led’ planning process. This would be in the interest of all concerned including groups concerned about infrastructure projects in their local area,” stated Mr van der Kamp.