Developer gets green light for large Kildare Town estate
Southgreen Road, with the Pousterle site to its immediate east
AN English firm’s plan to build 146 homes in Kildare Town, just north of a site where it had to go to An Bord Pleanala (ABP) in 2023 to get an eventual green light to build 168, has got the planning permission first time around on this occasion.
Pousterle Ltd from Worcestershire applied to Kildare County Council on 6 March to build 136 houses and 10 apartments on a 6.13Ha (15ac) site between Southgreen and Old Road, and just north of the new Southern Link Road, and got the formal go-ahead earlier this week.
The plans allow for each unit to have a private space in either a front, rear or side garden for the houses, or balconies for the apartments, as well as a 160sqm, single-storey creche, with a 60 sqm outdoor play area.
Pousterle have also planned for two separate open spaces totalling a little over 7,000sqm, as well as 321 car parking spaces and 529 bicycle parking in secure enclosures to help promote their corporate concept of ’15-minute towns’.
This is just north of their Árd na Páirce Theas development which required the now discontinued Large Residential Development (LRD, ie.>100) permission from ABP (now An Coimisiún Pleanála) which started construction in 2024.
The firm certainly did their homework this time round, with their architect Brock McClure from Dun Laoghaire submitting a 69-page Planning Report with the application, whilst their engineering consultants Walterman Moylan from North Dublin topped this with a 119-page report.
However, despite owning another land bank almost five times the size of this development to the north and west of it, Pousterle could be approaching the saturation level for housing numbers Kildare Town within the constraints of the Local Area Plan 2023-29.
This has recommended that for the period between 2023-28, Kildare Town should absorb 4.7 per cent of the population growth in the county, equating to 1,182 individuals in an expected 430 properties, which should see the population jump beyond 11,000 – double what it was 20 years ago.
However, this begins to look troublesomely aspirational as Kildare County Council has already green-lit five estates in the town at Magee (375 units), Oak Road (260), Greyabbey View (207), Rathbride Road (87), and Walker’s Gate (56) where the combined total of 985 more than doubles what the KTLAP recommends up to 2028.
