In this article we cover:

  • What rural housing changes Mid Ulster Council proposed
  • Why the farm cluster self-build policy has been blocked
  • What the decision means for smaller rural infill sites
  • The proposed rules for homes for carers and family members
  • Why a special housing route around Lough Neagh was rejected
  • How much new housing DfI wants directed away from the countryside
  • What happens next with Mid Ulster’s long-delayed development plan

Anyone hoping to build a home in the Mid Ulster countryside will want to keep an eye on the council’s new development plan. The Department for Infrastructure (DfI) has stepped in and ordered changes to several of the one-off rural housing policies Mid Ulster wanted to introduce.

As first reported by BBC News NI, the Department has blocked proposals that would have created extra potential opportunities for rural housing, including on farms that don’t meet the usual “active and established” test.

The changes also affect smaller infill sites, accommodation for family members who provide or receive care and a special housing route for commercial fishers around Lough Neagh. These are proposals in Mid Ulster’s still-unadopted Draft Plan Strategy.

DfI’s Section 15 Direction, which came into force on August 27, 2026, tells the council what it must change before the plan can move on.

Mid Ulster’s draft plan already included the usual route for a house on a farm: the farm had to be active, established for at least six years and hadn’t already benefited from a permission under the same rule during the past 10 years.

The council wanted to add another option, a “Dwelling in a Farm Cluster” policy. This would have allowed for one house on a farm that wasn’t active or established, or where permission had already been granted in the previous 10 years.

To qualify, the site had to sit within an existing cluster of at least three substantial farm buildings, with buildings on at least two sides and the policy could only be used once within that cluster.

However, DfI told the council to remove the policy as it says dropping the active and established farm safeguard would conflict with regional planning policy and could create significant additional development pressure in the countryside.

DfI also claimed that the wording is too loose and could lead to “a very wide interpretation” of what counts as a farm and could even “incentivise the artificial subdivision of farm units” to create another chance to build a house.

Another proposal that could have been useful to self-builders relates to smaller infill, or gap, sites. Mid Ulster wanted to allow, in exceptional cases, a single house in a smaller gap between two existing dwellings, provided both had their own curtilage and fronted onto a road or laneway.

That is the exception DfI wants removed. It argues that two houses with an empty site between them don’t constitute a continuously built-up frontage. In its view, building a third house on the vacant site would create a row of three houses, rather than simply fill a gap in an existing row.

DfI has also told the council to remove a proposed policy for a carer or somebody receiving care from an immediate family member.

The Mid Ulster proposal would have allowed an “extension to an existing dwelling to form a separate but attached residential unit”, or the “change of use of an existing building within the curtilage to form a separate residential unit.”

The council’s idea was to help families who might not meet the much stricter “personal and domestic circumstances” test. Its plan pointed to the benefits of extended families living close to one another, while still requiring evidence about the care being provided and why it was needed at that location.

DfI describes the idea as a “kinship-based” policy and says a family connection on its own should not decide whether rural housing is allowed. It argues that multigenerational living can already be supported through options such as an extension or “granny annex”.

Behind these individual policies is a bigger disagreement about how much new housing should go into the countryside.

Mid Ulster’s 2019 Draft Plan Strategy planned for 11,000 new homes by 2030 and put a strong emphasis on keeping rural communities viable.

Rather than giving the countryside a fixed share of its Housing Growth Indicator (HGI), the council wanted to monitor rural approvals. Because around 40 per cent of households were already in the open countryside, it proposed reviewing the policy if countryside approvals went above the equivalent of 40 per cent of the district’s HGI.

But DfI has rejected that approach and wants Mid Ulster to plan for about 13,600 homes, with roughly 42 per cent in the main hubs, 33 per cent in other settlements and just 25 per cent in the countryside.

Another more local proposal has also been rejected by the DfI. Mid Ulster wanted commercial eel or scale-fishing licence holders to have a route to building a home within a designated area around Lough Neagh.

Applicants would have needed to show that they had lived and carried out their fishing work in Mid Ulster for at least six years and hadn’t already received permission for a dwelling in the previous 10 years.

DfI says the evidence doesn’t show that licence holders need to live beside the Lough to do their work, or that they face a particular housing problem.

It also points to the environmental pressure on Lough Neagh, arguing that extra rural homes relying on non-mains sewerage in the catchment would not sit well with efforts to cut nutrient pollution and improve water quality.

There is another issue running through all of this: how long the plan has taken.

Mid Ulster published its Draft Plan Strategy in February 2019 and submitted it to DfI in May 2021. The Section 15 Direction didn’t arrive until August 2026.

By September 2023, the council was already asking DfI when an Independent Examination would take place. In that letter, the council said the delay had caused “considerable frustration” among local people and elected members. It also warned that the longer the process dragged on, the greater the risk that the evidence behind the plan would become out of date.

That warning now looks relevant as DfI’s 2026 Explanatory Note acknowledges how much time has passed and says the council will need to revisit and update its evidence.

DfI even says Mid Ulster should consider whether the scale of the changes means it needs to take extra procedural steps, including potentially going back to the Preferred Options Paper stage.

Mid Ulster Council’s latest update says the timetable for the Local Development Plan is now “under review”.