One Off Housing

@Micheal84 wrote:

Where does the future of one off housing lie, will new proposed policies even be implemented?

Until a national standard for rural and even urban housing is implemented, a design guide if you like, the future of rural housing is never going to be certain… i.e. case study from co. Clare. A local girl has been trying for years now to build on a plot of land of which her father owns. There are two neighbouring houses to one side of this site, each owned by two of her sisters, granted planning permission in the last five years. The LA want her to move her site for fear of Ribbon development. Unfortunately their is nowhere else she can go, besides try and purchase a new site, but then has the dilema of not being able to afford to build. New guidlines are supposed to give preference to local people building on their own land. Just 500 meteres down the road, the LA granted permission for a dozen or more holiday homes. I think that speaks for itself….

The next government whoever it will be, needs to change things, as I believe and know of cases where corruption rules the halls of the LA and anyone who doesnt have the money and brown envelopes will have little chance. Developers need to be investigated. How they get planning in some areas is beyond belief, even planning for residential in green belt or industrial zoned areas.

Dont get me wrong, there are some excellant developers who put alot into housing estate appearances, but others who cut corners and go the not so legal route about getting planning.

Answer to your question… I cant see it happening for a long time.. perhaps we need an independant body to investigate this, besides An Bord Pleanala.

JS

@Micheal84 wrote:

Where does the future of one off housing lie, will new proposed policies even be implemented?

The policy has been implemented in full; it has been a complete free for all including foreign investors for the past two years. To the detriment of the Countryside in general and some very special landscapes and priceless natural habitats in particular. Clientist politics as a national policy delivered in full; once Bord Pleanala has been abolished the policy of 100% lebensarum shall be complete.

Economist warns on 5% house price fall
Monday, 21 May 2007 09:14
The construction economist, Jerome Casey has warned that the current downturn in the housing market could become a housing bust unless competitive issues in the economy are addressed through Government policy.

Mr Casey says structural difficulties in the economy, in relation to competitiveness, energy and healthcare, have been unmasked by the tailing off in the housing boom.

Writing in the latest edition of Building Industry Bulletin, Mr Casey argues that a stable housing industry needs to be founded on a competitive economy and housing expectations have outrun the economic underpinnings since 2002.

AdvertisementHe says economic growth will be constrained until competitiveness problems in the economy are overcome and that this will have a negative impact on house values.

He is predicting house prices will fall 5% this year and by up to a further 10% in 2008, while house completions will drop to 62,000 per year over the next five years.

Properties most vulnerable to sharp falls in value include holiday homes in the West and one-off houses with a 60 minute car drive to work, he says.

According to Mr Casey, unless the Government introduces policies to restore competitiveness, then the cyclical downturn in the property market of 2007 (and which is expected to continue into 2008) will turn into a ‘structural housing bust’.

He also notes that thus far, demand for new housing has been dominated by what he terms ‘housing insiders’ who are either existing house owners or investors, rather than first time buyers.

So much for prudent management of the economy. If construction goes you will be using Ryanair a lot more. This election promise from the PD’s and the way that FF have fluffed it has almost recreated the 1980’s again

It is now time to protect the value of the existing housing stock and stop all permissions for one off houses

@Micheal84 wrote:

Where does the future of one off housing lie, will new proposed policies even be implemented?

Are you referring to the Sustainable Rural Housing Guidelines for Planning Authorities? If so, they can be found here: http://www.environ.ie/en/Publications/DevelopmentandHousing/Planning/FileDownLoad,1620,en.pdf

These guidelines have been implemented. The broad gist of them was to advise planning authorities that they should take a more positive approach to one-off housing, allowing this type of development where at all possible within the rules.

Maybe you are talking about aesthetic guidelines?

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/05/30/marooned-in-the-suburbs/

good article here on the reasons against one off housing in the UK.

Not really about one off housing tho is it? Its about sprawling low density housing estates around towns and cities like our planning system encourages here. A prime example; Dublin.

It seems to me that it is still a case of “Who you Know”, when it comes to rural development. I have been involved in a large number of applications for one off houses, and the policies of my LA seem to be somewhat inconsistent. I have had planning recently granted for a dwelling with a ridge height of 7.5m in an area populated with dwellings of much lower ridge heights. In this instance the local councillor applied a lot a pressure on the area planner, the result being a grant of permission. While the same planner refused a dwelling of similar size in a similar area.

My question is who dicates the implication of planning policies, Planners or Councillors. Generally I havn’t found much of a problem with the genuine housing need issue, in fact it is open to abuse with the insertion of a common condition, “The property may be sold within seven years subject to the approval of the local authority with the potential buyer showing a genuine housing need.

I feel the only way forward is a common policy on one off housing, each LA would zone areas of the countryside which would define the size and type of development. This would speed up applications and possibly reduce the number of refusals to ABP.

From the Irish Times today.

Support sought for one-off rural housing
Mark Hennessy

Planners must heed the Government’s determination to have more one-off rural housing, but they should not allow them to be built on the side of the road, Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, Éamon Ó Cuív has declared.

Speaking to the Patrick MacGill Summer School, Mr Ó Cuív said the Government has set the objective that rural communities should be developed and that rural population numbers should rise.

“We need the recognition by all organs of the State of their role in ensuring the democratic will of the people as expressed through their Government is achieved.

“This is something that our physical planners are going to have to become more sensible about,” he said.

“I am not questioning the professional integrity of our planners but I do have to question the mindset within which they operate,” he added, during a debate on rural life.

“Some planners can only see, and I don’t know where it is coming from, a hierarchy of cities, gateways, hubs, towns, villages and the rest.

“We must see in rural Ireland a totally different hierarchy and the dispersed communities where not everything focuses around hubs and gateways and everything else.”

However, planning rules practised by Galway County Council, for example, which have allowed widespread and much-criticised ribbon development should be discouraged.

“I had endless, endless rows with Galway County Council. They have destroyed, and this is the irony of it, the landscape of rural Ireland and at the same time resisted allowing people live in rural Ireland.

“How they have done it is by their absolute insistence on road frontage, and the dragging of people down on to the main roads, on to the tourist roads, instead of “losing” our houses in the folds and the hollows, the hills of Ireland, where you could have lost twice as many houses, preserved our landscape and at the same time preserved our rural population,” said Mr Ó Cuív.

“What I think we have done, foolishly, is to adopt European thinking, which is based on a very different history, culture and, importantly, climate. With a bit of imagination, we can meet both objectives.”

Rural people are attached, firstly, to the townland and the parish: “The planners totally ignore that order of priorities. It is absolutely foolhardy to ignore this particular hierarchy of place, as opposed to the conventional one that sees it as cities downward.

“There is no point in talking about preserving the heritage of the countryside, about preserving the culture, the language, the music. None of that is preservable without preserving the people. It is just not doable,” he declared.

Meanwhile, An Post’s chief executive, Donal Connell, said the closure of nearly 400 post and sub-post offices since 2000 had not “been planned or structured” by the company. He said the closures came because post office contractors faced “enormous difficulties” caused by changing demographics and consumer habits.

“Increased use of cars to access large centres for shopping has taken its toll on villages and rural communities throughout Ireland and An Post is by no means the only one to suffer,” he said.

A “detailed review of the network” will be carried out later this year to identify “the optimum configuration” of post offices, “taking into account the needs of our customers”. The rapid changes have “not been conducive to the efficient running of the business” in rural areas.

© 2007 The Irish Times

Looks like the minister is taking after his grandfather and is able to ‘look into his heart’ and know what the people of Ireland really need – despite the advice of the professional planners who seem to be missing out on something… As for the national spacial strategy – it already has so many hubs and gateways (one for everyone in the audience) that it is hardly incompatible with the minister’s preference for a house in every field (as long as they are away from the main road….)

Did Seamus Caulfield write that for the minister, or did he think it up all on his own?

If Mr O Cuiv wants to go back to the time when the housing pattern was allegedly dispersed across the entire countryside, I’ve no problem with it, but why stop at the location of the houses? Why not free himself from the shackles of the national grid, motorised transport, clean running water, the welfare state, movable type, higher language functions, tools, fire…

Hand me my loincloth, Mr Thoreau, I’m leaving it all behind.

Or, in other words: TIMES HAVE CHANGED! DIDN’T YOU GET THE MEMO?!?!

For the love of g-d… Are we really still having this conversation?

His argument of linear building lines along country roads is dead on the money… this ‘engineered’ development plan policy is the singular most damning reason for the aesthetic pollution of rural housing….

i still cannot fathom that people are arguing that rural development (or redevelopment) is akin to rural social regression…… thats simply a misinformed kop out of an argument….

at least us rural culchies have mastered the use of contraception…according to that specimen of statesmanship, Ian Lumley….

@henno wrote:

His argument of linear building lines along country roads is dead on the money… this ‘engineered’ development plan policy is the singular most damning reason for the aesthetic pollution of rural housing….

i still cannot fathom that people are arguing that rural development (or redevelopment) is akin to rural social regression…… thats simply a misinformed kop out of an argument….

at least us rural culchies have mastered the use of contraception…according to that specimen of statesmanship, Ian Lumley….

How dare you bring Ian Lumley into this argument; as anyone who has watched this issue will say Lumley has sat on the sidelines of this process and only appealed the most outrageous cases directly affecting desinated areas.

One off housing is simply a timebomb that will make economically viable local service provision impossible going forward.

David McWilliams summed it up perfectly with his mommy I want my Kit Kit analogy.

Momma Dick’s child was spoiled and so were some of the best landscapes in the country as a result.

the only local service provision need for rural houses is electricity…and seeing as we can get ‘the lectric’ to islands off our coast it should not be an unreasonable request to service every dwelling…..

those ‘economy’ obsessed of you do not understand the ideology of rural living… rural houses should aim at being as autonomous as possible… from both an input and output viewpoint… this may seem to some of you as a ridiculous pipe dream… but thats, in my opinion, should be the rural ideology…….

and i will bring whomever i wish into any argument i want….

rural landscapes have been blighted by the failure of the planning process…. failure to have the balls to refuse permission based on bad architectural design, bad dwelling siting, inadequate geological topography….

i have spent the last 3 weekends driving around connemara villages of carna, kil kerian, recess etc and i have seen examples of complete visually defication (usually happens to be late 70’s to early 90’s examples of ‘bungalow blight’ monstrosities)….. but i have also seen some beautiful comtemporary dwellings that complement the landscape in an unimposing enhancing way…..

there seems to be a perception that the ‘urban’ lifesytle needs to be reproduced in rural settings… this could not be further from the truth….. yes, i agree that ‘site harvesting’ is a serious issue, but not one that should negate the truely pastoral from achieving their preferred lifestyle… you can always return to your concrete jungles in your suvs and bmws after visiting ‘the natives’…. like any screaming child its great when you can hand them back…..

henno, c’mon now, we all know that there’s SUVs and BMWs littered about the rural roads every day of the week as these people return from their offices at 6pm to live their “truly pastoral” lives in their “autonomous” houses from where they demand electricity, gas, telephone, post, broadband, sewerage, tarmacadammed roads, satellite tv, refuse collection etc etc, funded, to an extent, by the taxpayer.

O’Cuiv is a backward tool. He was just inches away from “comely maidens…” in that ill-informed rant.

his lot have lost this debate time and time again. Why is it still happening?

HIS lot may have lost THEIR debate time and time again, but theres still a social and philosophical debate to be decided over the merits of rural housing , which cannot be deliberated on when taken in conjunction with the mistaken assumption for ‘urban’ lifestyle….. which seems to be the continuing pattern from the ‘blanket ban’ focus group…

i dont want to reraise the argument thats ongoing in another thread on this forum, but, the theory out there that ‘prevention is better than cure’ when it comes to rural housing does not in anyway respect an irish traditional pastoral lifestyle choice that is accessible to a minority in this country…. ‘they’ would rather see no development in the face of stringent requirements and guidelines….. this to the detriment and eminent collapse of rural society…

this debate rages on and has by no means been lost already….

Oddly enough,other countries have stringent controls on building in the countryside and yet their rural societies don’t seem to have collapsed.Why do we always have to re-invent the wheel in this country, not only on this but on so many issues?

@alonso wrote:

his lot have lost this debate time and time again. Why is it still happening?

This is not true. O’Cuiv won this debate at cabinet level two years ago and further had his policy implemented.
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/breaking/2005/0413/breaking1.htm

Other than the greens, there is all-party political support for more one-off housing. Tens of thousands of one-off houses have been built every year for the past decade and the numbers being built have increased since the change to a ‘presumption in favour’ in 2005.

So, how can you say the ‘this lot have lost the debate’?

They may have won in the practical sense,for the moment, but they have lost the intellectual debate. And with the increasing (if we’re lucky) influence of the Greens in Government ,the increased visibility of sustainability issues in the area of one-off housing and the coming increase in the price of petrol as oil becomes scarcer,to name only some of the factors, the points the opponents of OOH make will become increasingly self-evident and ultimately unchallengable. It’s only a matter of time.