Clare County Council has refused to grant planning permission for the construction of five homes in West Clare.
The decision comes after residents raised concerns that the development would “impact upon their residential amenities”.
MNT Draughting Services lodged a planning application on behalf of its client Pat Fitzpatrick on December 15th 2023 for a housing development at Knockerra West outside Kilrush.
The proposed development would have consisted of five detached four-bedroom dwellings as well as foul sewer treatment systems, percolation areas, connecting to ancillary services, developing a service road and a new site entrance.
On January 25th, a submission was made by the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, stating the proposed development site contains a high density of recorded monuments “making it especially significant and vulnerable in relation to its archaeological heritage”.
For this reason, the Department’s submission recommends an “archaeological impact assessment be included as a condition of any grant of planning that may issue”.
On the same day, a submission was made by Michael Hersey Planning on behalf of a group of residents in the Knockeerra area – with their concerns coming under the categories of “overdevelopment”, “residential amenity issues”, “visual amenity issues”, “drainage” and “other issues”.
The submission states that residents “do not consider that the scale of the proposed development is appropriate to the context of the village” as its population is just 33 persons and there are 11 houses in the settlement at present.
Other concerns outlined in the submission are that the proposed dwellings would be overlooking the gardens of existing residents, that traffic safety issues would arise as there is no streetlighting or footpaths included in the development and that a strip of land on the northern boundary of the proposed development site isn’t owned by the applicant.
Clare County Council ruled to refuse planning permission for the development on August 15th subject to three conditions.
