“That the Chief Executive report on the progress of implementing sustainable water management and biodiversity enhancement measures in the Council's own developments.”

The motion in the name of Councillor D. Healy, was proposed by Councillor D. Healy and seconded by Councillor J. Newman

Motion: Councillor D. Healy

“That the Chief Executive report on the progress of implementing sustainable water management and biodiversity enhancement measures in the Council’s own developments”.

Report:

Surface Water and Flood management on all developments must comply with the Sustainable Drainage & Flood Management objectives in the Fingal Development Plan 2023-2029 and the Strategic Flood Risk Assessment for the Development Plan as well as the requirements of the Fingal Green Blue Infrastructure Guidance and the Fingal Green & Blue Roof Guidance.

FCC have a number of developments in progress that take into account Sustainable Drainage & Flood Management objectives in the Fingal Development Plan 2023-2029 and the Fingal Biodiversity Action Plan along with assessing projects under the relevant indicators in the selected Building Environmental Assessment Methods of the Irish Green Building Councils Home Performance Index or BREEAM as appropriate. The indicators sit under Land Use and Ecology which support biodiversity policies.

Green roofs are being provided on a number of apartment buildings including Church Fields, Ballymastone, Mooretown and Seatown Road with green roof currently proposed for Woodside. The urban infill development at 30-32 North Street is to incorporate a green roof over the bike store, rainwater butts, permeable paving in the courtyard space and beneath the car parking and tree pits.

A number of Public Buildings recently constructed or in progress incorporate green roofs including Meakstown Community Centre, Baldoyle Racecourse Community Centre, Skerries Library and Swords Cultural Quarter. These also include tree pits, permeable paving and planting. The Meakstown Community Centre also features a rain garden swale and the Baldoyle Community Centre parking spaces have been constructed in permeable grasscrete.

All the above projects use native planning in the landscaping proposals. The schemes incorporate nest boxes for swifts, swallows and/or house martins as appropriate. Lighting proposals are bat sensitive and incorporate bat boxes where relevant.

The Building Environmental Assessment Methods adopted include biodiversity assessment in terms of impact, net gain and/or ecology green points as appropriate.

Source of report:  Daire Bracken, Senior Executive Architect/Colin Gallagher, Senior Engineer, Planning Strategic & Infrastructure

The report was Accepted