Plans for ten houses in Tubber are turned down

Outline plans for a ten-unit housing development in Tubber have been rebuffed by Offaly County Council.

An application for outline planning permission submitted by Peter McCormack for a site beside Tubber NS was refused by Offaly County Council last week.

The plan was for eight four-bed and two three-bed dwellings on land, which was described by Offaly County Council as enveloping Tubber NS on two sides.

The council refused permission for three reasons. It said three of the proposed dwellings were situated in an area denoted under the Specific Objective of the Tober Sraid Plan in the Offaly Co. Dev Plan to “improve the provision of car parking for the national school and reserve lands to facilitate the provision of further extension to the school where necessary.”

It said, as a result, the provision of housing in such an area would contravene materially the county development plan.

It also ruled that seven of the proposed houses would be located within an area of the county that is designed as ‘a rural area under strong urban influence’ in the county development plan.

The plan policy is that certain categories of applicants would be given a positive presumption for the development of a permanent rural home where the have a “functional economic or social requirement to reside in this particular rural area”.

The council said as the “provision of seven houses where no occupiers have been specified does not comply with the above policy”.

It finally ruled that the “the proposed development and traffic it would generate taken together with the existing vehicular traffic of the adjoining national school on this minor road would endanger public safety by reason of traffic congestion, traffic hazard and obstruction of road users.”