TIME TO BUILD
FUNDING, PLANNING AND LACK OF LAND LEAVING SHORTAGE OF HOUSING SAY DEVELOPERS, CLLRS
PRESSURE is mounting on the Government and Sligo County Council to help kick-start housing development in and around Sligo town.
Developers and many public representatives believe now is the time for the Council to release land from the Strategic Land Reserve to allow builders a chance to provide homes for existing and future residents.
“There’s hundreds of young people in Sligo who can’t get a place to live. There’s no houses being built to accommodate the people who are also dying to come back to Sligo but there are no houses for them to buy,” said FF County Councillor Tom MacSharry.
“Take that in conjunction with the retired and elderly who can’t afford to maintain their properties and can’t downsize. I know there are a lot of developers in Sligo, why aren’t they building?” he said.
A local developer also spoke of his frustration at the lack of development here.
THE Government and Sligo County Council are being called on to urgently release lands currently held in the strategic reserve to facilitate new house builds in the town.
Developers and county councillors say there are no new houses being built to provide accommodation for either the young or old.
They say they are growing increasingly frustrated at the lack of development and lack of a planning strategy to counter it.
For those lucky enough to be in a position to buy a house, there’s simply nothing out there to buy.
One builder who did not wish to be named, told The Sligo Champion that the lack of development was down to three main reasons: the planning process, funding and lands tied up in reserve.
“There has been no land in Sligo developed for the last twenty years. So much of the land is landlocked. Land that’s not in the reserve is not being built on,” he said.
The builder, who has been in the business for over two decades, said some land banks available for development were sold off by Nama in individual parcels of land which means those sites will never be built on.
He maintains there is plenty of land around the town, “fully serviced and on bus routes” but was put into the reserve “at the stroke of a pen” years ago.
He says now is the time to release those lands on the outskirts of the town, such as on the Bundoran Road or Strandhill Road.
“There should be no issue taking it back out now. The planners themselves zoned the land, saying we needed this in the town and surrounding villages. They took it out of the reserve. Now the jobs are coming - how come we don’t need it anymore?” he said.
The builder said the reason planners put the lands around Sligo town and outlying villages into the land reserve was because they thought developers were going to build “willy nilly”.
“No one’s going to go in and suddenly build a 100 houses - they’re going to build them to order from now on.
“Whatever happened in the bad old days, I can assure you, that if everything was out of the reserve in the morning, there’s a very limited number of people who could start building houses.
“It’s not an easy job to go back and try to start building houses again. There’s a few that will try to get it going. I’ve been trying myself but there’s times I just say, why would we bother? Because it’s just like banging your head off the wall,” he said.
“We’re listening to the news every night about people needing houses but it’s just impossible to get anything started,” he said.
The first new Sligo and Environs Development Plan since 2009 is currently being drawn up by Sligo County Council.
The new Local Area Plan (LAP) will run from 2018-2024 and is expected to be adopted by councillors later this year.
Until that is passed by the Council, nothing happens.
Even if land is eventually released by the Council, the planning process can take a minimum of “two years before you put a block in the field.”
This businessman, who prefers to call himself a builder rather than a developer, said a culture of “professional objectors” emerged during the boom.
“Someone down in Kerry can lodge an objection to a ¤20 million project in Sligo - either for spite or just for the craic - and hold it up for nine months for ¤25.
He’s been approached by people offering to withdraw their objection if the prices was right: “It wasn’t a few pounds, it was units. One person didn’t want a semi, they wanted a detached house if they withdrew their objection.”
“The recession ruined every developer. Every developer lost everything, from the big to the small because you were always head of yourself. We always had to buy our land three years ahead to be ready to move on to the next job. Any money people think the developers made went into their last field.
“I think if there’s land in Sligo town with bus links and someone is willing to put their money into it to get something going, they should be bending over backwards to help them because there’s not too many around Sligo that was at it would bother their head going at it again, including myself. At the moment, it’s just going nowhere,” he said.
He maintains Sligo needs a new large
estate with bus links for both young workers who may not be able to afford a ¤250,000 semi and for older people looking to downsize to a bungalow or apartment.
“We need to building something that caters for everyone. Then you can put in your community centre for a mix of young and old residents.
“This idea that people have that they can live in Strandhill or Rosses Point because they have money isn’t really on. Everyone’s entitled to live in their own space,” he said.
“If they really want to get it going, de-zone the land,” he said. Referring to the widespread belief that a small number of developers are “sitting” on land around Sligo, the builder agreed a certain number of people are waiting for the price of the land to go up.
“They’re not really interested in developing. The less land released, the more valuable the land. They’re speculating. If there’s more land released, all the land becomes less valuable,” he said.
This builder believes it shouldn’t be down to builders to “make submissions and then be written about as developers lobbying councillors - that’s their job, to make sure the land is there to be built on.
“All we’re trying to do is get building again, there is a need for it,” he said.
People’s perceptions of planning needs to change - the days of building 100 3-bed semis and the big houses are gone. I think the time has come to stop talking and start doing,” he added.