Belfast And South Down Plans Released Early

Northern Ireland's environment minister has issued two reports on unpublished area plans that were first commissioned more than a decade ago.

Alex Attwood said the break with precedent was due to the fact that work on the Belfast Metropolitan Area Plan and a separate plan for Banbridge, Newry and Mourne had taken so long and releasing the reports was the "open and transparent" thing to do.

He emphasised that the plans cannot be altered and his department would be pushing for their implementation.

The Belfast plan, covering housing, development, interface areas and planning for Carrickfergus, Castlereagh, Lisburn, Newtownabbey and North Down, will affect 35% of Northern Ireland's population living within its boundaries.

Work started on it in 2001 and on the other plan in 2000.

Attwood said the early release of documents was "a radical change of approach" but he believed it was "the right thing to do in terms of openness and transparency".

He said: "I understand that in these difficult economic times, any measures that I can take to introduce further certainty about potential development opportunities will be welcomed in the interim period before [the plan] is finally adopted."

Attwood said residents, councils and developers could assume that applications would normally be decided in line with the draft plans on most sites mentioned in the PAC reports.

But where the PAC recommended further consideration, "the public cannot make any assumptions as to the development status of sites until such times as the plan [is] adopted," Attwood said.

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(NE)