Making an Effective Development Plan Submission

• The Development Plan is the primary statement on land use planning and when adopted forms and Environmental Contract between the Planning Authority and the Community;
• Many of the environmental, social and economic problems which Ireland now faces are as a result of bad planning and a lack of understanding of long-term impacts of poor land-use policies;
• The planning system is the frontline for environmental protection, community development and the achievement of sustainable development and this is why it is so important for community activists,
• Development Plans are reviewed every six years with the review process taking two years. There are three opportunities for the public to make submissions 8 at pre-draft stage, when the draft plan is published and placed on public display and when amendments to the Draft Plan are published;
• Increasingly Development Plans are becoming more focused on sustainable development and environmental protection integrating a range of top-down measures such as EU Directives and Government Policy Guidelines;
• Development Plans must be informed by a Strategic Environmental Assessment and an Article 6 Assessment to protect ecological sites;
• The Development Plan Guidelines 2007 prepared by the DoEHLG provide a useful resource in critiquing a development plan. These Guidelines and a range of other useful resources are available at www.environ.ie;
• Development plans can be complex documents and reviewing is best undertaken by groups with local knowledge;
• To ensure a greater chance of your submission being taken into consideration make sure your submission is as succinct and specific as possible recommending direct changes to the development plan text;
• The most important challenge for the achievement of sustainable development and environmental protection is the effective implementation of development plans and active monitoring of policies and objectives. This will require active ongoing participation by community groups and Environmental NGOs.
• Making a Development Plan is the most important function of local Elected Members 
  
• Make your voice heard: get involved and lobby!

Development Plans at all levels are at the heart of Planning and are at the heart of Public Participation in Planning.

At the core of this area of An Taisce's site will be a fully searchable database of all current development plans.  This will be supported by a number of important Guides and Tools to aid everyone in their involvement in the Development Plan Process.

Guides

Whereas County and other Development Plans must reflect the individual County/Area, we believe that there are a number common ideas/goals/problems/etc that should be dealt with in the development plans.  Therefore, we will create and publish in this section a number of guides on such topics as:

• Spatial Planning
• Checklists (have you covered everything)
• Suggested Best Practice
• FAQ - we will develop a series of frequently asked questions (see Work in Progress) 

• Identify main threats and opportunities. 
• Consider a sustainable vision for the county
• Consider the context of the county in the Regional Planning Guidelines and National Spatial Strategy
• Review the success and failure of the existing plan.
• Divide the work up into the key issues such as settlement strategies retail and employment policies, access to water and energy, transport policies, landscape and access, biodiversity, the built heritage and Gardens. 
• Consider good policies use in other plans, in particular from adjacent counties.
• The criteria used to assess each section of the existing plan should include the impact on emissions of greenhouse gases and biodiversity. 

Search Current Plans

This will be a fully searchable database of all current plans. It will be backed by a powerful search engine that allows wildcard and fuzzy searches along with combinatory (boolean) searches.   Details of the search parameters are explained. See here...

Search Draft Plans and Submissions

This will be a fully searchable database of all draft plans and current An Taisce submissions. It will be backed by a powerful search engine that allows wildcard and fuzzy searches along with combinatory (boolean) searches.   Details of the search parameters are explained. See here...

Time tables

This will contain a timetable of deadlines associated with particular plans and will show the status of plans that are going through the process.  It will also be used to publicise events around the review of development plans.  It can also be used to email registered users of the site with reminders of these meetings and deadlines.

Documents

The actual Development Plans etc as Dowloadable Documents

Interactive

This part of the site will require you to register but will  provide a number of tools for interactive work over the internet, such as:

• Discussion Groups/Fora (Moderated)
• Wiki
• FAQ
• Blogs