AN English firm’s plan to build 146 homes in Kildare Town may yet fall foul of constraints within the Local Area Plan (KTLAP).
Pousterle Ltd from Worcestershire applied to Kildare County Council earlier this week (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.
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 also plan for two separate open spaces totalling a little over 7,000sqm, 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 a now discontinued Large Residential Development (greater than a 100 homes) permission which started construction in 2024.
However, despite owning another land bank almost five times the size of this development to the north and west of it, Pousterle may be hitting 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.
