Chapter 1 - Purpose and Status
Purpose
This document sets out the Regional Development Strategy
(RDS) for the future development of Northern Ireland to 2025.
It takes account of key driving forces such as population
growth, the increasing number of households, transportation
needs, economic changes, and the spatial implications of a
divided society. It seeks to inform and guide the whole community
in the drive to create a dynamic, prosperous, and progressive
Northern Ireland in the third millennium.
Northern Ireland, in common with other regions within Europe,
shares the major challenge of providing and sustaining a high
quality of life for all its citizens in the 21st Century.
In order to prosper, the Region needs to capitalise on the
strengths of its people and its quality assets. Looking outwards,
it must build its economic strength in a highly competitive
global economy.
The devolved administration in Northern Ireland is committed
to the promotion of sustainable development and sustainable
communities in order to build a more prosperous and fairer
Region. The RDS provides an overarching strategic framework,
to help achieve a strong spatially balanced economy, a healthy
environment and an inclusive society, in accordance with the
first Programme for Government 1 in 2001, which
states:
"The Regional Development Strategy will provide
an important planning framework for tackling the deficiencies
in our infrastructure and helping the overall development
of our economy and society".
Moreover, in planning for the future, it added:
"We must give careful consideration to where
people live and work and other key social, environmental and
community factors so that we can plan our public infrastructure
most effectively. A Regional Development Strategy will provide
the strategic planning framework for this purpose. This will
require innovative arrangements at the sub-regional level
and regular monitoring to ensure that the Strategy is sufficiently
flexible to enable it, Area Development Plans and the Development
Control process to respond to emerging trends and opportunities.
It will also be necessary, and appropriate to take account
of the cross-border context".
The RDS will influence the future distribution of activities
throughout the Region. It is not limited to land use but recognises
that policies for physical development have an important bearing
on other matters. The RDS, therefore, addresses a range of
economic, social, environmental and community issues, which
are relevant to delivering the objectives of achieving sustainable
development and social cohesion in Northern Ireland.
The RDS is not a fixed blueprint or master plan. Rather,
it is a framework, prepared in close consultation with the
community, which defines a Vision for the Region and frames
an agenda which will lead to its achievement. It provides
the spatial planning context for:
- strengthening the competitiveness of the regional economy
and tackling social and economic disadvantage;
- protecting and enhancing the physical, natural and man-made
assets of the Region;
- housing, transport, air and water quality, energy and
waste strategies, and for infrastructure providers and public
service promoters; and
- development plans and for guiding public and private
investment decisions relating to land use.
 Status
The RDS was prepared under the Strategic Planning (Northern
Ireland) Order 1999. Under that Order, the Department for
Regional Development is responsible for formulating, "in consultation
with other Northern Ireland departments, a regional development
strategy for Northern Ireland, that is to say a strategy for
the long-term development of Northern Ireland"2
. The Order requires Northern Ireland Departments to "have
regard to the regional development strategy" in exercising
any functions in relation to development. In particular, planning
policy, development plans and development schemes prepared
by the Department of the Environment and the Department for
Social Development respectively are required in future to
be "consistent with the regional development strategy". In
practice, this means that they should be in broad harmony
with the strategic objectives and policies of the RDS. The
RDS will also be material to decisions on individual planning
applications and planning appeals.
It is not the role of the RDS to redefine the strategies
of other Departments for their specific areas of responsibility,
which have been developed within their own statutory remit
and through specific consultation exercises. Rather, the RDS
seeks to provide an over-arching strategic planning framework
to facilitate and guide the public sector in respect of those
elements of their strategies, which have a spatial development
perspective.
The RDS has been prepared in close consultation with all
government departments to provide an agreed spatial framework
within which the public and private sectors can work effectively
together to maximise the use of scarce resources, achieve
mutual benefits and secure real added value.
The RDS is supplemented by the Family of Settlements Report
containing profiles of individual towns and their future potential.
The RDS takes account of all the background reports prepared
during the strategy development process and the Report of
the Public Examination (Appendix
1).
The RDS contains a Spatial Development Strategy
and related Strategic Planning Guidelines which aim to provide
long-term policy directions, from a strategic spatial perspective,
for the public and private sector and the whole community.
However, nothing contained in this document should be read
as a commitment that public resources would be provided for
any specific project. All proposals for expenditure will be
subject to economic, social, financial and environmental assessment
and will also have to be considered having regard to the overall
availability of resources.
The Strategic Planning Guidelines are not intended to be
detailed operational policy statements. Further work will
be needed on drafting new, or amending existing, operational
policies to give effect to the Strategic Guidelines.
Developing
the Regional Development Strategy
The RDS was prepared by an in-house planning team in the
Department for Regional Development, with advice from an inter-departmental
steering group and a panel of international experts. Preparation
of the RDS took full account of parallel work on developing
a more integrated and sustainable approach to transportation
at both the United Kingdom (UK) and Northern Ireland levels.
Of particular importance is the White Paper on the future
of transportation, "A New Deal for Transport: Better for Everyone"
(1998); "Moving Forward – the Northern Ireland Transport Policy
Statement" (1998); and the Railways Task Force Interim Report
(2000).
The important work undertaken by the Economic Development
Strategy Review Steering Group, published in "Strategy 2010",
has helped shape the RDS. There has also been close liaison
in relation to important emerging work on air and water quality,
energy and waste, climate change and biodiversity (Appendix
2).
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