Irish Minister of State, Ciarán Cuffe and Transport Minister, Noel Dempsey have jointly introduced for public consultation, new draft Guidelines on Spatial Planning and National Roads.

The aim of the guidelines is to ensure that roads planning and policy, and development planning and development management processes are appropriately and effectively aligned, in order to guide development to the most suitable locations to maximise the investment in the national roads network, while also in overall terms encouraging a shift towards more sustainable forms of travel and transport.

The guidelines will encourage a collaborative approach and early engagement, in line with international best practice, between planning authorities and the NRA with the aim of ensuring that transport and land use planning considerations are taken into account at the early stages of both development plan and development management processes. This is to ensure that future development at locations on or in the vicinity of national roads is guided to the most suitable location and that work on Ireland’s national roads network is planned for and managed in a complementary and integrated manner.

These guidelines will primarily apply to the national roads network and set out policy with regard to planning considerations relating to development affecting national roads outside the 50-kph speed limit zones for cities, towns and villages.

The new draft guidelines will replace the document, Policy and Planning Framework for Roads, published by the Department of the Environment and Local Government in 1985, supplement other policy guidance in relation to retail planning and sustainable rural housing and replace the NRA policy statement on national roads published in May 2006.

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While the guidelines outline exceptional circumstances in both the development plan and development management context, they also indicate that it’s not simply a matter of differentiating between national primary and secondary roads for the purposes of facilitating planning approvals on national secondary roads. National secondary roads must be considered within the overall context of national road system in that they may provide now or in the future a strategic function along all or part of their routes, and so any consideration of traffic and safety implications in respect of single rural houses will continue to be considered in this broader context. Planning authorities need to ensure that substantial public investment in our national transport infrastructure is not eroded by a lack of overall plan-led development.

Minister Cuffe said: "These guidelines encourage a collaborative approach between planning authorities and the National Roads Authority with the aim of ensuring that work on our national roads network is planned for and managed in an integrated manner enabling economic development of Ireland while encouraging a shift towards more sustainable forms of travel and transport.

"We must ensure that development is guided to the most appropriate locations by ensuring that transport and land use planning considerations are taken into account throughout the development planning process."

Led by the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, with the participation of the Department of Transport and the National Roads Authority, a working group was established to coordinate the process, comprising key stakeholders, including representatives from local authorities with both an urban and rural planning perspective.

Minister Dempsey added: "There is a continuing need to protect the State’s significant investment in roads, particularly in the current economic climate. There is also a need to optimise the economic return from our roads, particularly with regard to their important national strategic economic role in the movement of goods. It is also important to ensure that there is effective integration between land use and transport planning. This can minimise the need for travel and reduce the length of journeys by maximising the proximity of people, business and the services they require. It can also encourage walking, cycling and the use of public transport and protect the efficiency, capacity and safety of public roads. The introduction of new guidelines on planning policy and roads is welcome and I look forward to the finalisation of the guidelines."

(NS/BMcC)