A month after the expiry of a Government deadline Northern Ireland ministers have still not been able to agree on a development blueprint for greater Belfast. The Belfast Metropolitan Area Plan (BMAP) — which aims to boost economic growth, development and employment in the area and zone land for specific uses — was passed to Stormont ministers by the Department of Environment late last year. Whitehall had hoped the plan, due for implementation by 2015, would have been signed off by the end of December.
Officially classified in the late 1990s, the Belfast Metropolitan Area is a grouping of six council areas which the Government wanted to see developed in a “unified and beneficial manner under a cohesive plan”. The local authority districts whose future planning decisions would be governed by an area plan are Belfast, Castlereagh, Carrickfergus, Lisburn, Newtownabbey and North Down.
The Department for Regional Development has already given the BMAP a certificate to confirm it passes all its requirements, but now the Province’s First Minister, Peter Robinson, has stepped in to claim the plan is a “cross-cutting matter” and must be considered by all Northern Ireland Assembly departments.
Alex Attwood, the former environment minister with the Northern Ireland Assembly, had argued that any amendments should be discussed by the executive as a whole, which should also have the final say on its adoption. The plan will then form the basis of a statutory document on which planning decisions will be made.
The retailing element of the area plan was published a year ago and, Attwood admitted, almost certainly led to the department store chain John Lewis abandoning a scheme to open premises at the Sprucefield Shopping Centre. Under the BMAP future expansion at the retail complex near Lisburn would be limited to outlets selling large items such as furniture, white goods and similar bulky goods.
Belfast city centre would retain its status as Northern Ireland’s leading shopping area, but Lisburn city centre and the towns of Bangor, Carrickfergus, Ballyclare, Carryduff and Holywood would be prioritised for retail expansion. “In the light of a number of retail studies, I am clear that it is right to put Belfast first while protecting the vitality and viability of existing city and town centres,” the minister claimed.
Both Attwood and his successor, Mark Durkan, have been under constant pressure from Northern Ireland’s construction industry which claims the continuing delay in the BMAP’s adoption is “causing grave damage to the area’s economy”.
Many developers see the plan as crucial to their future, with some builders now under severe pressure from their banks to recover significant amounts of money they have invested in the plan’s inquiry process.
The Belfast Metropolitan Area Plan was first unveiled in 2004 and has been dogged by controversy ever since. At the time Tom Woolley, professor of architecture at Queen’s University, prophetically said: “I suspect that when an assembly examines such a plan in the near future, they will have to take a long hard look at all this and maybe ask for a whole lot more work to be done before it is eventually accepted.”
