Appendices

Appendix 9 - Achieving quality residential environments

Planning obligations

The policy is to require developers to bear the costs of works required to facilitate their development proposals. Examples of planning obligations which may be required in association with the grant of planning consent are:

• Necessary infrastructure, eg roads, sewers, improvements to public transport and walking and cycling facilities;
• Provision of adequate open space to meet the developments' needs, eg for amenity and children's play;
• Provision of increased woodland cover through community woodland;
• Provision of facilities or land reserved for necessary community facilities generated by the development or to which the development will contribute to local demand. This could include land set aside for community development and other neighbourhood facilities;
• Provision of social housing;
• Provision of all details of the development as part of the development, not left to individual occupiers, eg all boundary treatments, landscaping;
• Provision of finance to the appropriate authority/group for a reasonable period, eg 10 years for maintenance of many of the above.

At present the relevant planning legislation is Article 40 of the Planning (Northern Ireland) Order 1991.

Concept statements

It is essential that developers, designers, planners and highways engineers enter into dialogue and adopt co-operative approaches to achieve shared solutions. The Design Guide: Creating places - Achieving Quality in Residential Developments (DRD & DOE May 2000) advocates the need for concept statements and master plans and sets out the main design principles and quality objectives for housing layouts.