Carlow County Development Plan shows a clear commitment to sustainable growth according to the Planning Regulator

The Planning Regulator says Carlow’s County Development Plan shows a clear commitment to sustainable growth.

The Office of the Planning Regulator has been assessing the county’s plan for 2022-2028 which will come into effect next Monday.

They say it lays out a strong vision on topics like housing, climate action, employment and enterprise.

This is the first time the county’s development plan has been assessed by the Planning Regulator.

KCLR News’ Domhnall Doyle has been speaking with the Planning Regulator and Chief Executive of the Office of the Planning Regulator, Niall Cussen, who says he’s impressed by Carlow; “Yes, it’s the first time that, well, all local authorities development plans have been assessed by our office and Carlow, it’s a very diverse and attractive county, strategically located but it’s a smaller local authority but it really has put a tremendous effort into its local development plan, we’re very happy with it”.

“Some particular strengths around it would be the way it sets out a really good strategy for the development across the towns, the villages and the rural parts of the county, it has good proposals for strengthening particularly its rural towns and villages, it also has very strong employment action, it clearly sees Carlow, you know, at the forefront at the overall efforts we have to make in transitioning into effectively a low carbon, zero-carbon economy and society”.

“Like all local authorities we all can see, you know, the pressure that smaller towns and villages are under, particularly I suppose the prevalence of empty and vacant buildings so there’s a lot of strong commitments in the plan around trying to secure the reuse of vacant buildings and under utilised parts of towns and villages so the focus really has to shift fairly heavily into the implementation”.