By Mike McKimm
BBC Northern Ireland environment correspondent
In a dramatic move, the government has moved to end the blight of building single houses at random in the Northern Ireland countryside.
From Thursday onwards, new plans will not be considered for single rural dwellings, with few exceptions.
The move ends a stampede which has seen planning departments all but overwhelmed by tens of thousands of speculative plans.
Faced with a move towards more controlled sustainable development in line with the rest of the UK, the planners had little choice but to crack down on this type of housing.
Currently three times as many single houses were being built in the countryside in Northern Ireland as in the rest of the UK in any one year.
For example, in the picturesque Mournes area, more than 3,500 new single houses were built in the last four years, angering conservation and environmental groups. They will welcome the latest move.
From now on, only houses for farming families or for retiring farmers will be allowed, and only if the case can be proved.
Some homes will be allowed for key employees for certain types of industries and there will be a special allowance for social need to help young or low-income families stay in rural areas.
The move will anger many farmers who looked to the sale of land for building as part of their income in difficult times.
Moratorium
In the past, some could get as much as Ј100,000 for a single site. Those days are over.
The move is, in effect, a moratorium, as the policy will not become law until later this year, following a period of public consultation.
But there were fears that this period would encourage literally tens of thousands of additional applications as people tried to beat the eventual ban.
The Department of Regional Development, which announced the move, said that there was ample land already identified for building in all parts of Northern Ireland to cope with housing demand for the next five to 10 years.
But the move is bound to anger developers, builders and would-be rural home owners alike.
(BBC)
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