Developers are not building creches to go with their housing developments, as required by their planning permission – that’s the point made by Fianna Fáil Councillor, Eamon Quinlan, during the Plenary meeting for March.
Cllr. Quinlan said those disregarding this planning condition have worsened what he called Waterford’s ‘creche crisis’.
“For about 20 or 25 years now we have been adding to our planning permission for developers that when they build an estate, if it is over a certain size they have to build a creche to provide young care facilities,” explained Cllr Quinlan.
“Most developers that I am aware of don’t actually go ahead and build those creches. They build the houses, they sell the houses and then they move on.
“Not only has this created a massive deficit of creches around Waterford city but also in Tramore, Dungarvan and so on. But also it causes a knock-on problem because the estate can't be taken in charge [by the Council] because it is not planning compliant and that causes huge problems for residents down the line when they are trying to sell a house, or when they are trying to get a footpath fixed, or light fixed.
“Can we please engage with the relevant department to see if we can access this funding for us to move in and to essentially build these creches in line with planning permission so that we can complete a lot of these estates around the county?” Cllr. Quinlan asked.
In response to this question, Director of Services, Ivan Grimes, confirmed that large developers are still required to include childcare facilities as part of their developments.
“National planning guidelines require planning authorities to provide for childcare facilities in any residential development up above 75 resident units. The minimum threshold I think is 20 places per childcare facility,” Mr. Grimes said.
Director Grimes also explained that such small childcare faculties were sometimes not appealing to creche operators, and that he is a part of group looking into the issue at national level.
“It’s not widespread but there have been developers who haven’t been able to get childcare operators to operate small childcare facilities. They have been requesting that we increase the size of the childcare facilities,” he said.
“Those guidelines are under review at a national level,” explained Director Grimes.
“I’m on a national steering group with 3 departments looking at them. They are all concerned about the lack of provision of childcare facilities, despite the requirement that the planning authority have to make provision for them.
“We will of course be looking at that as a means of addressing some of the problems here in Waterford,” he added.
AARON KENT
Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.
