Almost 300 social homes are planned for Ballymun in north Dublin in what will be the largest social housing development in the suburb since the demolition of the 1960s tower blocks a decade ago.
Councillors will in the coming weeks be asked to approve plans for a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) development of 288 social homes, with 273 apartments, 10 “own door” maisonettes and five houses, on sites of the former flat blocks.
In the mid-1990s following decades of neglect, the government announced its largest ever housing and community redevelopment project with the regeneration of Ballymun.
Over the next two decades, 36 blocks of 2,820 flats built in the 1960s, including seven 15-storey towers, were demolished. Almost 2,000 replacement social homes, as well as 1,350 private homes, mostly apartments serving a rental market, were built.
The new homes were mostly completed before the final tower block was demolished in 2015. Two years later the council published a plan for the sites which remained vacant following the demolition of the last towers.
The 2017 Ballymun Local Area Plan (LAP) included “site briefs” for 31 plots of land in Ballymun detailing the housing, commercial, community or recreational facilities to be provided.
Around 2,000 more homes, mostly apartments, could be accommodated in Ballymun, the council said. To correct what the council described at the time as Ballymun’s “skewed tenure mix”, the new homes would largely be private housing. Future social housing in the area would, the council said, be provided through the obligation of developers to set aside 10 per cent of new homes for people on the social housing waiting list.
Mixed tenure was needed to encourage more shops and other services to the area, the LAP plan stated. “The dominance of low-income households and limited disposable income is restrictive for local businesses and makes it difficult to attract new commercial activity into the area.”
However, the council has had limited success in marketing the housing sites to developers and is coming under increasing pressure to satisfy demand for new social housing in the area.
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The council has selected five sites it owns for the PPP project. The largest site faces on to the western side of the Ballymun Road, beside five- and six-storey apartment blocks built under the regeneration project. This site will have 132 apartments in blocks ranging in height from four to five storeys.
Behind this site, three smaller plots will have eight, five, and 34 homes which will be a mix of houses, maisonettes and apartments, up to six storeys. These link to another large site, which has frontage on to Balbutcher Lane and will have 109 apartments of four to five storeys.
The council said it had received submissions on its plans which raised concerns about the lack of tenure diversity, with all 288 homes to be used for social housing.
However, there were a number of other sites in the immediate area in the planning or development stage “that will deliver a mixed-tenure neighbourhood”, it said.
“It is further noted that the tenure across the Ballymun LAP area continues to be monitored by Dublin City Council to ensure a balanced and integrated approach is taken overall to the proposed tenure in Ballymun.”
The council is in talks with the Land Development Agency to build affordable housing for low- and middle-income workers on the vacant site of the former Ballymun “Town Centre” shopping complex.
The eight-acre site in the heart of Ballymun, once designated for a vast Dundrum-style shopping complex, has remained vacant since the demolition of the 50-year-old centre was completed four years ago.
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