Council finds ways around parts of minister's new lower apartment standards

Smaller, darker flats are on the way, after the Minister for Housing, Fianna Fáil TD James Browne, slashed apartment standards in July, changes which once again override Dublin City Council’s city development plan. 

The guidelines replace the last set of standards, issued in December 2022 and updated in July 2023, which reduced apartment standards in place before that. 

The new guidelines free up developers to build whole blocks of studios if they want, and reduce the minimum size of a studio apartment from 37 sq m to 32 sqm.

The new guidelines also insist on fewer homes that are dual aspect – that is, they have windows on two sides.

“They basically override our development plan,” said Brian Keaney, acting deputy city planner, at a meeting of the council’s planning committee on Tuesday. 

But he said that the council planners are of the view that in some areas the development plan is still the relevant standard.

Under the new guidelines, there is no stipulation as to how many homes within a development should be studios, one-beds or two-beds. 

But Keaney says that Dublin 1 and Dublin 8, where the council has carried out housing need and demand assessments, it can still insist on the mix of homes to meet those needs.

And he says the council will fight to keep its requirement for 5 percent community and cultural space in the 17 designated regeneration areas of Dublin.

“The intent is obviously to promote community, arts and cultural uses, to create vibrant mixed-use urban communities,” says Keaney at the meeting. “And again to support regeneration and obviously to support creative industries.”

Dublin City Council hasn’t responded to a query sent Wednesday as to whether it can carry out more housing need and demand assessments for other areas.

At the meeting, Keaney said that the purpose of the changes is to make projects more financially appealing for developers, stimulating more private-sector housing supply.

“It's part of a broader government response to try and incentivise the market and get numbers delivered,” he says. 

But the Land Development Agency – the state’s developer for big housing projects – was apparently pushing for these changes too.

Many of the changes made by the government feature in a presentation made in April by the LDA to Department of Housing officials.

Community and cultural space

At the meeting, Keaney’s main focus was on the council’s policy to encourage cultural and community spaces as part of housing complexes. 

There is a severe shortage of community, cultural and recreational spaces in some parts of the city.

In the two and a half years since the council introduced its policy – which says that 5 percent of big developments should be set aside for arts or community space – it has delivered 36,000 sqm for communities, said Keaney.

Of that, 27,000 sqm of is in the city's designated regeneration areas, which potentially need those amenities the most, he said. 

Regeneration areas include parts of the inner city, Ballymun, Finglas and Cherry Orchard, among others.  

It isn’t yet clear if the policy has delivered as much as that, though, or if some of that is still on paper, not yet built.

With its guidelines, the government sought to spike such policies requiring developers to set aside space in big new residential complexes for community and cultural uses. 

The idea being that this would make big new residential complexes that bit more financially appealing for developers – and help stimulate supply. 

But the council’s position is that it can still insist that big housing developments in the regeneration areas include community and cultural space, says Keaney.  

Also, throughout the whole city, developers of big commercial schemes – office buildings, for example – will still have to provide 5 percent of the floorspace as community and cultural space, too, he says. 

In a 50-percent commercial scheme, the community and artistic uses would be 2.5 percent of the total space, he said. 

Cutting back

The Land Development Agency was among the developers that has pushed for a reduction in apartment standards. 

In a presentation to the Department of Housing in April, the agency pushed back on the need for apartments to have private outdoor space, like balconies or terraces. 

By cutting back on apartment sizes, balconies and dual-aspect requirements, the state could slash building costs, the agency suggests. 

“Benefits of flexibility for removal of balconies in favour of external landscape opened spaces, significant cost savings can be achieved,” says the presentation. 

Not providing balconies could save between €11,000 and €22,00o in each home the presentation suggests. 

Meanwhile, the presentation said that the requirement for 5 percent cultural and community space costs €12,000 to €20,000 per apartment.

It also said that many councils were insisting on 50 percent of homes being dual aspect – with light coming into a home from two sides – which it said wasn’t necessary. 

At the council meeting on Tuesday, Jonny McKenna, of the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland, said that the changes to standards will affect daylight within the new homes. 

“There is a quality of life and a human dignity aspect to this that we need to balance, as well,” he says. 

“People have to live. People will live in these areas, and they’ll raise families in these areas,” said Keaney, the acting deputy city planner. “Hopefully go through the whole life cycle in these areas.”

There is pressure to increase the number of homes delivered, but without an emphasis on quality. “It kind of misses the point,” he says. 

“We expressed considerable concern over the new guidelines,” said Mairead Kenny, of the Irish Planning Institute, which represents planners, at the council meeting. 

She wondered if the council can work out ways to exempt more areas of the city from bits of the guidelines, she said.

In search of affordability

Architect and housing commentator Mel Reynolds says he isn’t convinced that the new standards are aimed at private developers at all. They seem to have been pushed by the LDA, he says.

Cutting apartment sizes and removing balconies might save a few thousand euros, but high-rise apartments in Dublin are so expensive that it won’t make them affordable, says Reynolds. 

“Apartments don’t work for affordable housing,” he says. 

So families will still be pushed out to the commuter belt. “It's a grim choice for people,” says Reynolds by phone on Thursday. 

Instead of tinkering around the edges, the government should just accept that high-rise apartment buildings are too expensive to build and shift to building high-density housing, at low- to medium-rise, he says. 

Stoneybatter is an example of a very densely populated low-rise neighbourhood, he says. 

The model is cheaper, better and more desirable and homes can be sold off plans, says Reynolds. 

Chopping and changing rules all the time also risks slowing the development of homes, says Reynolds. “It definitely doesn't encourage supply. It creates a huge amount of uncertainty.”

Keaney, the council planner, noted a similar concern at the meeting. 

Constantly changing standards and guidelines results in delays to building, he says. 

“The development sector presses pause and it looks at what it has planning consent for, and then it goes back to its lenders and there is a whole discussion about viability and so on,” he says.