€9m estate finally gets green light in Monasterevin
Stock planning
A FIRM that had to shell out nearly €200,000 last year as a levy for a vacant site in Monasterevin has finally been given permission to build 24 new dwellings at that location.
Masonbrook Holdings – based out of Johnstown, but who built a lot of the nearby Brocan Woods – applied to build 14 terraced houses and 10 apartments on a 0.71Ha (1.8ac) site off Ferns Avenue, less than 100m north of the railway station, last June.
However, they did not get final permission until last month as the application “needed significant revision”, with additional information submitted to Kildare County Council on four separate occasions.
One of these was in reply to a submission from Irish Rail who demanded a 2.4m (8ft) block wall between the new estate and the main Dublin-Cork line.
These dwellings will now complete the Ferns Bridge estate, tucked between the railway line and the canal.
This final part of the estate will be situated on the western edge of the development, adjacent to the Grand Canal, and accessed via the R414 Oldgrange Road, and Ferns Avenue.
A second revision came after the Planners deemed the original application as being “contrary to the specific zoning objective pertaining to the Monasterevin Local Area Plan (LAP)” because they didn’t include a neighbourhood centre.
Masonbrook also had to submit a Sustainable Drainage System (SuDS) to cater for the one in a 100-year storm, with an allowance of 30 per cent for climate change, and a further 10 per cent for “urban creep”.
There were also some minor issues with regard to landscaping, play areas, and taking in charge clarifications, but the applicant's response on each of these was deemed sufficient by the planners.
Last March, an Comisiún Pleanála (then known as an Bord Pleanála) upheld a demand by the council to issue a bill for €178,500 as a vacant sites levy on the owners of this site of land.
The bill was €59,000 a year for the three years 2021-23 inclusive, and served on the owners Masonbrook Holdings on 8 April 2024 in the first instance.
The overall 3.24Ha (8.1ac) site was originally valued at €850,000 in August 2021, and the vacant site levy of €59,500 a year is seven per cent of that estimation.
The first levy of this amount was issued in August 2022 for the year of 2020 and was successfully appealed as it was deemed “incorrectly calculated” as the site had not been on the Vacant Sites Register on 1 January 2020 in accordance with the Housing Act.
However, by the time the council got round to issuing a levy in 2024 for the second time, it had got its ducks in a row by having the site formally placed on the register on 18 December, 2020, hence the decision to uphold the Council’s demand.
Under the Monasterevin Local Area Plan (2016-22) this site was zoned as ‘New Residential’, and has had an extensive planning history.
