A combined residents group fears that Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council will scrap existing conservation areas under its Development Plan 2004-2010 in favour of a new Architectural Conservation Area (ACA) designation which could open the way for "indiscriminate and unsuitable development". Edel Morgan reports
However, the county architect for Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council Derek Jago says that such speculation is "premature" as Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council "may decide to retain the old conservation areas until the ACAs are put in place".
He says "nothing will be decided" until the matter is debated by the council in the coming "two to three weeks".
Under the Planning and Development Act 2000 an area must undergo a comprehensive assessment process set down by Dúchas guidelines before it is deemed suitable as an ACA. The Combined Residents to Save Open Spaces (CRSOS) however believes "there are insufficient funds available" to finance such "assessments" adequately.
Derek Jago concedes there are insufficient funds "to do everything in a short space of time. We have to do them one at a time and hope to do a considerable amount in the five years of the plan. There is a huge amount of work to be done, including visiting, photographing, and recording buildings.
"We are lumbered with the statutory procedure, we have no option but to follow the process."
It is believed that Dalkey will be the first to undergo an ACA assessment in the Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown area. If an area is deemed an ACA, it must abide by what can be an "extremely restricted and much more onerous planning process".
Dublin's main thoroughfare O'Connell Street is the first ACA in the capital and its objective is to ensure that all proposed developments are carried out in a manner sympathetic to the architectural and civic character of the area.
Often in an ACA the only developments exempted from planning permission are routine works of maintenance "when there is no change to the form of the element under repair or to the type of materials".
Derek Jago says that the ACA procedure will probably "bring more buildings with protected status into the net than were there before" but says that some buildings may be relieved of their protected status if it is considered they do not merit it.
