Development Plan two years away

Westport Development Plan two years away

Neill O’Neill

PUTTING snails before people is not the way things should be done, Cllr Tereasa McGuire remarked last week, after she and her fellow Westport councillors were given an update on the progress of the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) being carried out ahead of the drafting of a new local development plan.
Cllr McGuire called the SEA a ‘noose around the neck of development’ and said that while she firmly believed a balance should be struck in development matters, people should be the primary concern.
At the meeting, which was attended by both town and county councillors from the Westport area, members were informed that a new development plan for Westport is unlikely to materalise before March 2010, due to the SEA.
The mandatory SEA is being carried out on foot of an EU directive which came into effect in 2004, and aims to anticipate problems relating to the future development of the Westport area, and make recommendations on how these can be avoided. As a result of this the new development plan is at least two years away from being finalised and the existing plan will be used in the meantime. It is the intention of Mayo County Council to amalgamate the Westport Town Plan, the Westport Environs Plan and the South-West Mayo Action Plan into one document.
The SEA is being carried out by a team of consultants from CAAS, and works by studying available information relating to the local area from the many Government bodies and national agencies who have completed their own studies within the region. Through this the consultants are then able to compare objectives in the proposed development plan against sensitivities highlighted in the environment, and give an early warning of potential problems.
The report will also highlight areas which are more robust and suitable for development, and those where development would have an adverse impact on the landscape and environment. This caused some concern for the councillors who said that it could become an obstacle to planning and could too easily be used by council officials as a justification for large-scale refusals.
In response to this, Conor Skeehan, from CAAS, said that the information the SEA is based on is not created or invented but is already in the public domain, and therefore, could presently be given as a reason for refusals. He said that a certain amount of flexibility would be lost but that the variables of nature such as the geology of one field as opposed to another could not be changed, and that the SEA would give the Council a greater understanding of their area and greatly aid them in making informed decisions regarding it. He added that all the information would be shared with councillors at every step of the process to avoid any surprises at the end.
CAAS’s presentation was broadly welcomed by all town and county councillors, with the general consensus being that it will go a long way towards striking a balance between progress and preservation and will remove a lot of uncertainty in the land-zoning and planning processes.
Commenting on the plan, Westport Town Manager, Peter Hynes, said that ‘bats, bunnies, herrings or butterflies’ would not be invented and that the SEA would tell the Council, in a scientific way, about the local environment and landscape, which would give clarity to their decision-making process and public understanding of why certain fields are zoned in a particular way. He added that if no major obstacles were met, the process would finish well inside the two-year timeframe.