On your doorstep: Ensuring you have the services and facilities you need close to your home
Kildare County Council is incredibly ambitious to ensure that its towns and villages provide the facilities and services that you need on your doorstep. This is rooted in national policy and international best practice and, allowing people to access what they need on your doorstep, will help us to walk and cycle more, drive less, tackle climate change, improve our quality of life and foster friendlier neighbourhoods.
Providing on-the-doorstep neighbourhoods is in many cases, limited by poor integration of streets and spaces, or poor permeability. Permeability describes the degree to which people have a choice of routes through the urban environment, providing proximity and access to local services and employment centre services, by short trips through either walking, cycling or other active modes. Permeability provides an opportunity to encourage healthier mobility choices, to relieve traffic congestion, to improve the urban environment and to help tackle the climate crisis through assisting in reducing dependency on the private car. If current trends in relation to vehicular traffic continue, congestion will undoubtedly increase, transport emissions will grow, economic competitiveness will suffer and quality of life within Kildare will decline. Kildare County Council recognises its important role as a local authority in increasing accessibility, promoting active travel modes and reducing car use by a variety of means and to better integrate land use and transportation planning.
The recently published Kildare County Council Permeability Guidelines (Reimagining Permeability in Kildare Reconnecting our Communities: Permeability Guidelines) have been prepared and informed by a range of national planning and active travel policies and seeks to ensure that all new development supports the concept of the 10-minute neighbourhood and improves quality of life for the residents of our towns and villages. These guidelines will facilitate and enable access through active travel means, to services within the locality “on your doorstep”.
The Kildare County Council Permeability Guidelines have been prepared to ensure that best practice in urbanism informs all new development and also, where beneficial, locations where retrofit connections may improve access to facilities and services on the doorstep in towns, villages and neighbourhoods.
The purpose of the guidance document is to demonstrate the concept, value and opportunity presented by improved permeability, to illustrate how Kildare County Council will progress permeability projects and to highlight Kildare County Council’s commitment to the delivery of quality and transparency, to ensure all new permeability links are delivered to an excellent standard. It also provides a range of tools that can be used to assess the benefit of permeability connections and to secure them through the planning process.
Following the publication of these guidelines (which is an Action [TM A13] of the Kildare County Development Plan 2023-2029), Kildare County Council will continue to progress work in this area, including to seek funding to develop “Local Permeability Schemes” in conjunction with the National Transport Authority, in order to maximise access to town centres, local shops, schools, parks, playgrounds, public transport services and other amenities [TM A12].
