Proposed Irish traveller site in Antrim refused by councillors
Antrim and Newtownabbey Borough Council refused the planning application on Monday night
Plans for a temporary Irish traveller site in Antrim have been refused by councillors.
Members of the Antrim and Newtownabbey Borough Council voted on the controversial proposal at a planning committee meeting on Monday night.
The councillors decided to go with planners recommendations and refused the proposals unanimously.
The Northern Ireland Housing Executive wanted the site, at the junction of Ballygore Road and Sussex Square in Rathenraw, Antrim, to become a site for Irish travellers for a temporary period of two years.
The proposal included the provision of four caravan spaces with associated car parking spaces and a prefabricated utility for each caravan pitch.
Two hundred and twenty seven letters of objection and one petition of objection with a total of 300 signatures had been received in relation to the application.
In council papers it stated the Northern Ireland Housing Executive advised this temporary accommodation was for one extended family.
The report stated: “The family had been living on an unauthorised site in North Belfast for three years and were displaced following legal action by the landowner.
“NIHE has looked to its own land bank as a means of temporary accommodation whilst efforts are made to plan more permanent accommodation. Currently there is no alternative Traveller accommodation in the area. The family do not wish to take up conventional housing as they wish to continue their current lifestyle.”
The site is close to the scheduled Rathenraw Fort, an Anglo-Norman motte and bailey earthwork fortification, and objectors were worried the proposed site would impact negatively on this.
A spokeswoman for the proposers said: “We are hugely disappointed that an original recommendation by the Northern Ireland Planning Service was overturned and we will have to go and make a determination on what to do next.”
The traveller family at the centre of the planning application say they will not be leaving the site.
