Waterford County Council is to reduce by 14 the number of village settlements around the county and phase out some zoned residential land banks to comply with the future low population projection targets for the county.
County Manager Ray O’Dwyer has confirmed that the Council would not be in a position to provide environmental, social and community infrastructure for the surplus ‘settlements’ over the life of the new County Waterford Development Plan 2011-2017.
Mr O’Dwyer said the Council had to have regard to the population targets set nationally for the South East Region and, in particular, County Waterford and there was an onus on the planning authority to justify the amount of zoned land in relation to the projected population.
Consequently, to ensure proper planning and sustainable development in the county it was necessary to reduce the levels of zoned land in line with those material considerations. It would be more appropriate to focus resources on areas that had the environmental capacity to take additional growth, he said.
