Environment

Part of Oral Answers to Questions – in the Northern Ireland Assembly at 2:45 pm on 20 November 2012.

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Photo of Alex Attwood Alex Attwood Social Democratic and Labour Party 2:45, 20 November 2012

I wrote to the chief executive of Coleraine Borough Council acknowledging the good work that has been done and asking him to share the best practice that was deployed and whether there was something more that we needed to do so that Portrush can be more and more like Kinsale going forward.  I indicated what I thought the ambition of this project should be.  I look forward to the deployment of, I hope, significant sums of money from within the Department or through January monitoring for projects across council areas. 

Councils have responsibility as well.  Belfast City Council uses the pollution order to good effect to deal with derelict sites and properties.  All councils should do the same, and I will write to them in that regard.  Belfast City Council has a suite of local law that deals with dangerous buildings.  Most other councils have the same suite, and they should deploy their legislative powers to bear down on developers and landowners, particularly those who are still viable and in business, to meet their responsibility to their local community and citizens to deal with pollution, dangerous buildings, decay and dereliction.  So the process is twin-track.  On the one hand, we will give money, as demonstrated in Derry, to improve the appearance of the city in advance of the year of culture, but Derry and all the other councils should deploy all the legal weapons in their armoury to go after the developers and landowners who have money and a responsibility that they are not facing up to.