Following publication of the Dundrum Central Master Plan and commencement of the latest round of public consultation, your association provided a further submission to the LDA and participated in a conference call with the LDA design team on May 4th.
Submission to the LDA :
In line with priorities agreed by poll at our February 25th association meeting, we continue to focus on improving mobility and safety where the development site interfaces with Dundrum Road.
We believe this is the area which has the most direct impact to our community, and where we have the strongest case to bring about change and improvement.
Our submission pointed strongly to the complete lack of consideration to infrastructure improvements outside the boundary line of the mental hospital site. The submission made can be found here.
We submitted sketches to the design team, illustrating our point that there is opportunity to widen Dundrum Road, improving site lines at the entrance of our estate, as well as making significant safety improvements to pedestrian and cycle crossings at the site entrance.
The submitted sketches are intended to provide an opening position to enable a fully integrated design from road and traffic engineers at Dun Laoghaire Rathdown. i.e the final solution from the engineers may not look like this – but there needs to be a better solution than the silence proposed!
We questioned the lack of transparency on traffic and environmental impact assessments carried out to date, as well as the removal of the proposed vehicular access to Larchfield Road.
It appears these studies will be released at time of the planning submission to An Bord Pleanála, which may then form basis for observations at the planning consultation stage. We made the case that these should be released sooner, though there is no obligation for them to do so.
Next steps in the development process for the site:
Following the current round of public consultation on the Master Plan, the next steps in the development process for the site will be:
- LDA design team finalises its design for planning submission.
- In June, the LDA will engage in triparty pre-planning consultation meetings with An Bord Pleanála and Dun Laoghaire Rathdown. Various department heads at Dun Laoghaire Rathdown will be involved in those meetings (planning, roads, environment, parks etc).
- Following the pre-planning consultation process, the LDA will submit its application for planning permission directly to An Bord Pleanála as a Strategic Housing Development (SHD). They are targeting September / October 2021 for the submission.
- Legislation requires that a SHD application includes creation of a dedicated website making the planning drawings, environmental and traffic impact studies and other supporting documentation available for public review. There will be opportunity for the public to submit observations on the planning application to An Bord Pleanála at that stage.
Ultimately, we are pushing for an integrated design that considers the community and site surroundings outside of the boundary wall.
The masterplan is completely silent on impacts outside of the boundary wall and we hope to bring about change in this.
Following the meeting with the LDA, we now intend engaging with local political representatives, the surrounding residents’ associations, as well as the planning and roads departments at Dun Laoghaire Rathdown to try impress our views ahead of the pre-planning consultation meetings.
As always, in addition to the residents’ association engagement, we actively encourage everyone with an opinion to engage directly with the consultation process and submit individual response via the dundrumcentral.com website.
If you have additional considerations or questions, please contact a committee member or send us an email at residentsassociation@highfieldwestbrook.ie