These are some practical moves that could help fix our broken housing sector

IT IS ABUNDANTLY clear that concerted action needs to be taken to address the country’s current urban housing crisis.

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, Simon Coveney, has already expressed his plan to fast-track the planning process to deliver extra 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.

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 that is crucial to the planning process and to delivering sustainable developments and neighbourhoods.

Streamlining policy

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 new planning act.

Legislation also needs to be streamlined and it’s unfortunate that a consolidated, amended version of the 2000 act remains unofficial and not up to date. That means that all other planning acts, including recent legislation, still needs to be cross referenced when preparing a planning application.

By comparison, the policies 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 guidance document for urban housing developments and one consolidated planning act.

Regional considerations must be heard

The appropriateness of housing density also has to be allowed for within policies – in other words, the level of density must be appropriate to a location. The new planning act currently overrides 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.

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 and water infrastructure bodies, An Taisce, and the relevant government departments.

For example, it has taken 10 years to adopt a master plan for the towns of Midleton and Carrigtwohill in county Cork, however there is still uncertainty over how infrastructure will be funded and delivered.

When it comes to housing supply, we need to consider how existing, under-utilised holiday-home developments might contribute to 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 lessons 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 an ‘exempted development’ that requires no planning permission.

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.

Aiden O’Neill is the director of Coakley O’Neill Town Planning.

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