The submission of a planning application last month for an extensive housing development just off the Strathroy Road in Omagh, comes on foot of the grant of outline planning permission for the same three years ago. The site is located just opposite Strathroy Dairy and will be accessed from the new Strathroy Link Road.
The current application is for what is known as approval of reserved matters, and it shows the precise number, layout and design of the proposed dwellings as well as landscaping and access arrangements. It also includes an acoustic report and landscape features in order to mitigate against the impacts of the Strathroy Link Road and neighbouring dairy on residential amenity.
The grant of outline planning permission is interesting because a large portion of the site is actually zoned for industry under the extant Omagh Area Plan, and under the planning legislation, proposals to develop land are expected to be in accordance with the plan.
Planning policy also generally prohibits the granting of planning permission for development that would result in the loss of land zoned for industry and there appears to be no policy basis for allowing housing on the industrial zoning at Strathroy.
The official report of the planning authority on the outline planning permission states that: “the loss of industrial land is considered further in the report and will not conflict with the Area Plan as there is [sic] alternative lands available for development”. The report then goes on to refer to a total of 53 hectares of undeveloped land zoned for industry in Omagh, out of which it considers that only 36 hectares are capable of being developed because the rest is affected by flooding or is inaccessible. The report is silent on whether the zoning at Strathroy Road was part of the 36 hectares.
Under the Council’s draft Plan Strategy for the Fermanagh and Omagh District, 42 hectares of land are planned to be provided in Omagh which is to be made up of new land and undeveloped zonings carried forward from the outgoing plan. So for every hectare of land that had previously been earmarked for industry and that is given over to alternative uses, equivalent lands may have to be found elsewhere through the plan making process.
It is also an interesting grant of planning permission considering that in a time when planning encourages housing on land within the built up area of towns such as Omagh, that this housing development has been allowed on a mainly green field site on the extremity of (albeit within) the town boundary.