The private speculative sector can’t build affordable housing, but there are other ways of achieving this, writes architect Mel Reynolds.

In the fourth instalment of Nessa Duggan’s column on designing and building a passive house for her young family, the focus shifts to overcoming drainage issues to secure planning, and just how small the heat load may be in the family’s new home.

In the third instalment of Nessa Duggan’s column on designing and building a passive house for her young family, she describes the process of designing a house to suit the family’s lifestyle.

Casa Architects has achieved NPPF 55 statusfor the development of a new passive housein a listed parkland near Frome, Somerset.NPPF 55, recognised as one of the mostdifficult planning applications to achieve, setsstrict planning restrictions to allow only trulyoutstanding or innovative architecture of thevery highest quality and standard to be built in the English countryside.

A DEVELOPER who built 52 holiday homes close to the Rock of Cashel has been granted "retention planning permission" for 32 of the houses.

Developer Seymour Sweeney is appealing against the planning refusal for his controversial Giant's Causeway visitor centre scheme, it can be revealed today. The move opens the way for another round in one of the most high-profile battles ever waged in Northern Ireland's planning system.

The first public hearing to be conducted under a new fast-track planning process for major infrastructural developments will begin today.

A €500 million gas terminal at the Shannon estuary in Co Kerry is the first project to be advanced to An Bord Pleanála oral hearing stage under the new Strategic Infrastructure Act.

Construct Ireland tracked down the busy director of Limerick Civil Trust to talk about the sterling work already done, current projects and to ponder the implications of recent FAS cutbacks.

When the two worlds of heritage and development collide opinions frequently become polarised and fraught with difficulty. There are few more vexed issues, as Tim Carey, Heritage Officer with Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council reveals

A marked lack of adequate central government action to promote sustainable house building in Ireland has been recently counteracted by planning authorities such as Fingal County Council taking action into their own hands, and setting standards geared to protect their constituents in an oil and gas scarce future. However, as sustainable building consultant Will Woodrow discovered from surveying planning authorities around the country, local government willingness is not always met with a full grasp of the issues needed to make sustainable housing happen.

In this adapted extract from his new book Natural Building: A Guide to Materials and Techniques, seminal eco architect Professor Tom Woolley outlines some of the reasons why natural building is necessary.