Our concern at Dundonald housing plan

On December 5, against the advice of the council's own planning unit, Lisburn and Castlereagh City Council's planning committee approved an application to build 175 houses on greenfield land zoned for employment at Dundonald.

By The Newsroom

Published 27th Feb 2017, 22:57 BST

Updated 1st Mar 2017, 08:51 BST

The application was supported by the DUP MP for East Belfast, Gavin Robinson, the Lagan Valley MLA, Edwin Poots, the East Belfast MLA Joanne Bunting, and promoted by Cherton, the political lobbying company behind the controversial Knock Golf Club application.

We deplore this decision. To deprive Ballybeen, an area of multiple deprivation, of land which offers the potential for job creation and stable, long term employment is wrong.

As is the privileging of greenfield interests over balanced and orderly, plan-led development.

Worst, though, will be the impact on east Belfast. High brownfield build levels are essential for renewal, especially in east Belfast, where decades of suburban overbuilding and out-migration have depleted community capital and wellbeing.We need to encourage more brownfield, not greenfield building.

John Kyle, PUP, Georgina Milne, Green Party, Courtney Robinson, Labour Alternative