Debate contribution: Housebuilding on Public Land

Debate contribution by Mr Timothy Gaston on 31 March 2025.

MLA

Mr Timothy Gaston

Party at the time

Traditional Unionist Voice

Date

31 March 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Housebuilding on Public Land

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4871624

Read the official Assembly record

Text

It is right to highlight, as the motion does, the critical need for social and affordable housing across Northern Ireland. It is commendable that the Minister has a target to deliver at least 100,000 new homes by 2039, with 33,000 of those being social homes, as outlined in the housing supply strategy. However, I have to tell the House that, while there is, of course, a need for land to deliver the strategy, a basic requirement for that target to be met is a fit-for-purpose water network. As I have outlined in the House previously, that is where my concern rests. While the housing supply strategy highlights that as a problem and commits to working with Northern Ireland Water to resolve it, there is nothing in its 41 pages to say what the Executive are practically doing to address it. I have a case with Northern Ireland Water currently that is located within a stone's throw of the main Ballymena waste water pumping station. The Northern Ireland Water engineering solution for connecting 10 new houses requires the developer to run a pipe to a location three quarters of a mile away rather than joining with the main sewerage pipe at the bottom of the site. That solution makes the site unviable for the developer to build on and risks the approved planning application sitting in limbo until the required upgrades are made to the Ballymena waste water station by Northern Ireland Water. The size of the development is too small for the developer to fund a capital works scheme to fix the issues in the catchment area, but there is a solution that will make the site viable again and help the Minister to meet his new-build targets. The solution is for the developer to build an on-site, dedicated waste water treatment works to an adoptable standard, but, no, Northern Ireland Water continues to drag its heels by sticking to its solution, the cost of which is double that of the on-site solution. If we are serious about meeting the Minister's target, there needs to be a change of approach by his Executive colleagues to delivery. In addition to the Northern Ireland Water issues, we have large areas of land locked by zoning for new roads that will never be built. I think of the Ballymena south-west distributor and the Cullybackey bypass in my constituency, both of which sit as plans, as they require land to be zoned for road network delivery, but have no possibility of being delivered.

If there were some joined-up thinking, progressing the Cullybackey College new build would remove the traffic problems in the village, and the need for the bypass would disappear. That would release more lands that could be used for housing. One of the fundamental problems with this place is that Departments operate in silos, with no regard for what others are doing. That is hardly surprising when you consider that, politically, there is little to unite the Communities Minister and the Infrastructure Minister. The matter that we are debating today is yet another example of the unworkability of Stormont; in fact, the public land agency that the motion calls for would be better sitting in the Department of Finance than the Department for Communities.

542 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 12:15 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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