Planning policy is forcing sprawl while blocking natural growth

PROPERTY

Property Insights by Johnny Gannon, Fair Deal Property

There is no shortage of land around Tuam.

Drive just a few minutes beyond the town boundary and you will find field after field that could comfortably accommodate well-designed family homes. You will also find willing landowners, and just as importantly, willing buyers ready to take the next step on the property ladder.

And yet, time and again, those buyers are being told no.

At Fair Deal Property, we have been inundated with enquiries from people looking for sites on the periphery of Tuam. Many are local. Many have strong ties to the area. Some are even seeking to build within a short distance of the homes they grew up in and yet cannot secure planning permission.

The reasons are familiar. Housing need criteria. Local area classifications. Urban fringe restrictions. In some cases, applicants have been turned down despite being within a kilometre of their family home, simply because they fall on the wrong side of a development boundary.

Travel further out into North Galway, into areas such as Milltown or Dunmore, and planning becomes significantly easier to obtain. Ironically, this encourages the very outcome planning policy is designed to avoid, ribbon development and dispersed housing in more remote locations, further from services and infrastructure.

It raises an obvious question. Are we solving the right problem? Because what we are seeing is not a lack of demand to build. It is a restriction on where people are allowed to build. And that restriction is creating unintended consequences across the entire local housing market.

People who would happily live close to the town, close to schools, services and community, are being pushed further away. Others abandon plans altogether. This connects directly to the broader housing market.

A lack of planning flexibility is not just preventing new homes from being built. It is also preventing existing homes from coming to market leading to further tightening of supply.

Of course, planning exists for a reason. Protecting the environment, avoiding uncontrolled sprawl, and ensuring sustainable development are essential and should never be ignored.

But we are also in the middle of a housing emergency. Surely there is a middle ground. A system that allows people with genuine local connections to build close to where they are from, while still maintaining proper planning standards and protecting the countryside.

Because the solution is not more complexity. Sometimes, it is simply allowing people to build.

For more information visit fairdealproperty.ie