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'The Belfast Urban Area Plan'

Article  in  Studies · January 1988

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 The Belfast Urban Area Plan
Author(s): Feilim O hAdmaill
Source: Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, Vol. 77, No. 306 (Summer, 1988), pp. 187-191
Published by: Irish Province of the Society of Jesus
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 THE BELFAST URBAN AREA PLAN

Feilim 0 hAdmaill
Feilim 0 hAdmaill is a researcher with the Social
Administration Department at the University of Ulster
at Coleraine.

news about the North of Ireland tends to be about the

Most political conflict there. However the last couple of 600ths
have also seen a plethora of community group activities in Belfast
which may have serious implications for social and planning policy
there.
Since 1972 Planning policy and procedure have been virtually
totally in the hands of the Dept. of Environment (N.I.), a department
of the Northern Ireland Office, neither of which are elected by the
people of the North nor accountable to them.
In recent 600ths this lack of accountability has come to a head
with the publication of Belfast's second statutory land use strategy
the Belfast Urban Area Plan (the BUA plan). This plan will
provide the framework which will influence all major planning
decisions in the Belfast Urban Area up to the year 2001. It will deal
with the 'regional role of the city', 'the quality of life' of its residents,
and 'the use of resources'. It will affect people living or working
in six local GovernmentDistricts Belfast, Lisburn, Newtownabbey,
Castlereagh, Carrickfergus and North Down and will set out
policies for economic development, housing, shopping, transport,
recreation and environmental improvements for the next 15 years.
For all these reasons, many enlightened people felt right from
the start that it was vitally important that local people had a say
in what was contained in this Plan. Some even suggested that local
people/communities should be involved in the actual drawing up
of the Plan. As Northern Ireland lacks government structureswhich
enable people to have an effective say in government decisions this
desire for popular participation in the making of the BUA Plan was
felt by some groups, notably Community Technical Aid (CTA),1
to be especially important, but it was not to be.
The 'consultation' procedure on the Plan started in 1985 with the
publication of adverts in the local press by the Department of

Studies, Summer1988 187

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Environment, N.I. (DOE inviting submissions to the Plan. Needless
to say, most people did not see the adverts and fewer would have
understood what they really meant.
Then in May 1987 the D.O.E. published its 'Preliminary
Proposals' for the Plan. This consisted of a glossy brochure with
limited detail. The document was, to say the least, confusing to most
people. People were given ten weeks to comment on these proposals,
a period which encompassed a general election campaign, the July
marching season, and the summer holidays. All this was hardly
conducive to obtaining optimum participation from local people
and community groups. Yet, due to an active awareness-raising
campaign by CTA and some other community groups, there were
still more than 1,500 objections to the proposals.
The First Draft of the Plan was then published in November 1987
with a further ten weeks during which objections could be heard.
This period was further shortened by the fact that it included the
Christmas and New Year holiday period.
Besides lack of time to respond to the Plan's proposals at each
of its 'consultative' stages local people have also lacked resources,
both technical and financial, to respond in a meaningful way. The
DOE is to be congratulated for its partial funding of CTA to help
provide technical assistance to community groups wishing to make
objections. But in many people's eyes the funding is too little (bearing
in mind the vast amounts the DOE was prepared to pay consultants
to draw up the Plan in the first place and too late.
S300ticismabout the DOE's commitment to consultation has been
further enhanced by the Government decision to set up a Laganside
Development Company to implement the Laganside Proposals (see
later contained in the Plan. This decision was made before the Draft
Plan was published and leads many to believe that, regardless of
the consultation procedure, the Plan may already be a 'fait
accompli.'
The closing date for objections was Friday 15th Jan. 1988 and
to date there have been over 2,500 objections. As a result the DOE
agreed to hold a Public Inquiry, in May, 1988. At least this may
give local communities another 'bite of the cherry'. However, once
again the actual structure and procedures of the Inquiry could be
disadvantageous to local people.
It is importantthereforethat groups continue to press the Planning
Appeals Commission to ensure, for example, that adequate facilities
are available at the Public Inquiry(e.g. provision of creche, photoco
pying, telephone, typewriter facilities etc. to ensure an optimum
level of participation.
188

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 Together with the actual 'consultation' procedure, there are a
number of main issues of concern to local community groups aris
ing from the actual proposals contained in the Draft Plan. These
came to the fore at a conference of local community and voluntary
groups organized in Belfast just before Christmas 1987. At this,
many groups expressed concern that the Plan does not address the
real needs of the community and certainly not those of the more
disadvantaged sections of the population such as the unemployed,
the low wage earner, women, the elderly and the disabled. The
general consensus appears to be that the Plan favours the more
affluent and has little to offer the more disadvantaged sections of
the community.
Take transportation for example. Here, the DOE has decided to
concentrate on a roads-based strategy and is proposing to channel
resources into new roads, to facilitate car owners, instead of pump
ing resources into a cheap efficient integrated public transport
system. These proposals therefore cater for the minority of
households who have access to a car (49 per cent and tend to ignore
the real needs of groups dependent on public transport such as
women, the elderly, the disabled, the young and the less well off.
The proposals for retailing concentrate on promoting city centre
shopping to the detriment of local shopping areas. Loss of local
shopping has had reprecussions for the less mobile sections of the
population and for locally-based employment opportunities, for
community cohesion and for morale.
Social problems and needs could have been tackled by this plan
if the planners had wanted to be a little bit imaginative. Nowhere
do the plannersattempt to address some of the major unemployment
black spots in the city such as North and West Belfast, or look to
the possible future socio-economic needs of areas like East Belfast
where traditional industries like the shipyard are running down.
The Plan has little to say about educational needs, especially for
the unemployed and the Irish-speaking community. It has little to
say about health needs and the health/environment connection has
been largely ignored in the Plan. Again, little consideration has been
given to the volume and types of waste the city produces. Proposals
seem to be limited to finding holes in the ground in which to bury it.
DOE intentions contained in the Preliminary Proposals, which
have been either dropped or put on the back burner, include the
breaching of the Green Belt for houses in East Belfast and the
proposed road through Belvoir Forest. These proposals would have
been environmentally devastating, and the DOE decision to remove
189

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 them from the plan is welcomed. However, it is noteworthy that
while the DOE has withdrawn the part of the Transportation
Strategy which involved a new Road through Belvoir, which is
primarilya forest and natural habitat, it is none-the-less going ahead
with planned road widening schemes at Lower Ormeau and in East
Belfast both areas of high population density which could
have many adverse environmental effects on local people and could
even lead to the break-up of local communities.
The question of Laganside has also raised some fears a600g
community activists in Belfast, The Laganside proposals envisage
the development of the River Lagan (which flows through the heart
of Belfast and its environs, with marinas, high quality recreational
projects and private luxury flats. Although these proposals have
generally been welcomed by the business community and appear
as mentioned earlier to be a 'fait accompli' regardless of the
consultation procedure, many community activists are concerned.
In 1981 proposals similarto Lagansidewere being made to rejuvenate
the old London Docklands. A Development Commission was set
up to develop the area and what has happened is that old working
class communities have been priced out of the area and replaced
by Yuppies. The Government says that Laganside will produce jobs
for local people, but they said the same in London, and it just has
not happened. In fact the unemployment rate a600g the Eastend
population has actually increased. Local people have witnessed the
break-up of their communities. Their housing needs have been
ignored and any available land has been taken over by private
speculators.
Whether the same thing will happen at Laganside remains to be
seen. Although millions of pounds of public 600ey are to be pumped
in to subsidize private investors, will the private investors actually
take the butt in Belfast
However, the real point is that most of the working class
communities living along the River Lagan were not consulted about
these proposals which will affect their lives, nor will they have a
say in the implementation.
Long before the Preliminary Proposals of the BUA Plan were
published in May 1987, groups like Community Technical Aid were
arguing that the planners had got the procedures all wrong. There
was lack of consultation and participationby local people right from
the start. CTA and many other groups are arguing that the Plan
shows once again a need for a new approach to Planning from the
DOE. What is needed is a bottom-up approach with the DOE
190

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 finding out the needs of local people before producing strategicplans
for local regions. This is especially important in the North of Ireland
where, unlike in Britain, planners are not accountable to the local
electorate.
Without the introduction of strategy planning procedures which
will ensure real participation by local people right from the start
in plans which will affect them, then we will continue to be plagued
by planning mistakes of similar magnitude, though of a different
type, to those that dogged us in the past. It is ironic that about the
same time the DOE's Preliminary Proposals for the BUA Plan were
published a Government decision was finally made to do something
about one of the worst planning mistakes ever made in Belfast
the decision to demolish the notorious Divis Flats in West Belfast.
Although the present Plan has no proposals for multi-storey flats
it does contain some proposals which have the potential to have
an equally devastating effect on local communities. Are those
communities to be denied a real say in the shaping of their future
and if so, why

Note:
1. Community Aidis a voluntary
Technical bodyrepresenting localcommunity
groupsin NorthernIreland.It providestechnicalassistanceto suchgroups
fieldandis partiallyfundedby the Dept.
in the planningandarchitecture
of the Environment(N.I.

191

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