Northern Ireland Schemes – Deep Soundings, Week Ending 7 November 2025

This week in NI construction feels like classic “two steps forward, one step sideways”: some long-promised regeneration schemes finally clear planning, tourist projects move into the spotlight, but the big strategic roads and stadiums are still stuck in the mud.

Here’s a QS-style sweep across what’s moving, what’s stalled, and what people are really saying.

1. Big move at planning: Meenan Square finally gets the green light

The headline planning story this week is Meenan Square in Derry’s Bogside.

• Derry City & Strabane District Council’s planning committee has granted full permission for a major mixed-use redevelopment of the long-derelict Meenan Square site.(apex.org.uk)
• The scheme is backed by The Executive Office’s Urban Villages Initiative and delivered with Apex Housing Association and Meenan Square Developments. It mixes:
  • New homes (including social/affordable)
  • A community hub
  • Local retail and workspace
  • New public realm and shared space

Committee approval came on Wednesday 5 November 2025, with political messaging around regeneration, shared space and “turning an eyesore into an anchor asset” for the Bogside.(Derry City & Strabane)

Current line is start on site in 2026, so 2025/early-2026 is about land assembly, detailed design, procurement and trying to lock costs before the next inflation spike.(Insider Media Ltd)

Soundings from the industry:

• Contractors see this as a real job, not a paper scheme – public-sector backed, regeneration-led and politically high-profile.
• Expect tight margins and heavy social value / community benefit conditions in the tender: local labour, apprenticeships and SME participation will be front and centre.
• Given location and history of anti-social issues on the old site, expect strong security, stakeholder engagement and phasing to be priced into prelims.

2. Tourism & leisure: Castlewellan’s £7m treetop walk steps into the spotlight

The other big talking point this week is the Castlewellan Forest Park Treetop Walk.

• A public consultation event on Northern Ireland’s first treetop walk is taking place this week (5 November) in Castlewellan.(Tourism NI – The Hub)
• Newry, Mourne & Down District Council has already approved a ~£6.8–7m investment following an Outline Business Case earlier in the year, working with EAK Ireland (nature-based attractions specialist).(Newry, Mourne and Down District Council)
• The project is pitched to add ~220,000 visitors per year, create dozens of construction and permanent jobs, and is explicitly framed as part of a wider Mourne–Newry–Narrow Water–Castlewellan tourism circuit.(Newry, Mourne and Down District Council)

From a schemes-pipeline point of view, Castlewellan is:

• Pre-planning but politically “blessed” – consultation now, application next, then the funding jigsaw.
• Strongly aligned with sustainable tourism and all-ability access, which ticks a lot of current funding boxes.

Soundings:

• Designers are talking about a very sensitivity-driven planning route – ecology, traffic, car-parking pressure and visual impact will all be hot issues.
• Local firms are already sniffing around potential packages: civil/structural, boardwalk / steelwork fabrication, M&E, interpretive fit-out, café/visitor centre, and landscaping.
• There’s a view that the Castlewellan–Narrow Water combo could quietly become one of NI’s most important regional tourism clusters if delivery doesn’t stall.(wesleyjohnston.com)

3. Planning framework shifts: Belfast city centre & coastal councils

There were also some quieter but important policy moves that will shape the next wave of schemes:

Sailortown & Cathedral Quarter “Development Opportunity Areas”

• Belfast City Council has published supplementary planning guidance on Development Opportunity Areas, including Sailortown and Cathedral Quarter, with the page updated on 6 November 2025.(Your say Belfast)
• It’s non-statutory SPG, but it will influence how planners assess city-centre schemes – height, mix, streetscape, heritage interfaces, active ground floors etc.

Industry reading of this: expect future Sailortown schemes to be denser, more mixed-use and more tightly shaped by place-making language, not just “stick another block of apartments beside the motorway.”

Antrim & Newtownabbey: refreshed Statement of Community Involvement

• Antrim & Newtownabbey BC has issued a revised Statement of Community Involvement (SCI) in November 2025, tightening up how consultation is expected to happen on planning apps.(Antrim & Newtownabbey Borough Council)

This matters for you as QS / promoter because:

• Pre-app engagement and consultation costs (exhibitions, CGIs, consultation websites, feedback reports) are increasingly “priced in” as normal, not nice-to-have.
• Objectors have clearer hooks to challenge poor engagement, which can mean more risk of delay if you try to cut corners.

4. Schemes on site: transport hubs, roads & housing-led infrastructure

Belfast Grand Central Station / Weavers Cross

• Main construction on the Belfast Transport Hub (Weavers Cross) is in the final phase, with associated road access due to be reopened from 26 November as the main construction phase concludes.(Construction Ireland)
• Earlier material confirmed the project remains on programme for opening in late 2025, with 26 new bus stands and 8 rail platforms.(specifymagazine.co.uk)

Soundings from site:

• It’s still being held up internally as the benchmark for collaborative working – big JV contractor, heavy BIM use, rail interfaces, and a relatively robust inflation strategy.
• Contractors are quietly saying: “More of these, please – large, multi-year, funded and clear.”

Ballymaconaghy Road & housing schemes in the south Belfast fringe

• DfI confirmed earlier in the year that Ballymaconaghy Road realignment has commenced, tied directly to conditions for a major housing development.(Department for Infrastructure)
• The works include carriageway realignment, right-turn pockets, new footways, lighting and crossings – basically unlocking housing capacity by fixing an unsafe junction.

This is a good template of the trend: private housing schemes underwriting public-realm and road upgrades via conditions, increasing the infrastructure content within residential jobs.

Coastal regeneration: Queen’s Parade, Bangor

• The £70m Queen’s Parade Bangor scheme is now in its delivery phase, with hoardings and Phase 1 public realm works starting over the summer; the project will deliver homes, hotel, offices, retail and a market plaza along the waterfront.(Department for Communities)

The on-site message here is that phasing and cashflow are everything – early public realm and visible progress help with political support and pre-lets, but it puts pressure on the developer to keep capital moving in a wobbly market.

5. Stuck in neutral: A5 and Casement Park

A5 Western Transport Corridor – still in the courts

• The A5 dualling remains one of NI’s quintessential “problem jobs”.
• Statutory Orders became operative back in November 2024, but a legal challenge was lodged in November 2024 and is still rippling through the courts.(Department for Infrastructure)
• A formal Notice of Appeal has been served by DfI following a further court setback this year, and recent commentary notes the project “continues to languish in limbo”.(a5wtc.com)

Soundings:

• Design teams and contractors are deeply frustrated: significant sunk costs, staff tied up for years, and no shovel in the ground.
• There’s a growing sense in the west that safety benefits vs procedural risk are badly out of balance – every further delay has a human cost on the existing A5.

Casement Park – still a funding jigsaw

• Casement remains the highest-profile stalled stadium in NI.
• Despite extra UK Treasury support (c. £50m FTC) and commitments of around £62.5m from Stormont and £15m from the GAA, there is still a major funding gap due to cost escalations.(Belfast Media Group)
• Recent political commentary describes the project as “stuck in a limbo of Executive dysfunction,” with design essentially ready but no fully-funded construction contract.(Belfast Media Group)

Soundings:

• Tier-1 contractors are wary of signing up to a fixed price on a complex, politically-charged, neighbour-sensitive stadium without locked funding and robust risk-sharing.
• Every month that slips makes Euro-style timelines less realistic and pushes the scheme closer to a fundamental scope/value-engineering rethink.

6. Wider market pulse: housing, holiday lets and viability worries

A few broader signals this week:

• The latest NI new dwelling stats (Q2 2025) show 2,248 starts and 1,475 completions – a pipeline that’s improving but still well below pre-2008 levels relative to demand.(Department of Finance)
• Business press is talking about “construction recovery gaining ground”, but the detail shows a very uneven recovery – strong in some public and infrastructure sectors, patchier in speculative private development.(Business Eye)
• At Stormont, MLAs have been debating holiday homes and short-term lets and how they interact with planning approvals and housing supply – another sign that planning policy is being asked to solve housing and tourism pressures at the same time.(TheyWorkForYou)

Soundings from QSs and developers:

• Viability gaps are the quiet killer of mid-sized schemes – especially city-centre resi and hotels where construction costs haven’t really come back down, but lenders are nervous and yields have shifted.
• You’re seeing more phased consents and chopped-back first phases: do the “bankable” blocks now, leave the ambitious bits on the drawings and hope the finance world looks friendlier in 3–5 years.
• Public-sector linked schemes (Urban Villages, levelling-style funds, cross-border tourism projects) are carrying a disproportionate share of the actual work on the ground compared with pure private speculative projects.

7. Where this leaves the NI pipeline going into winter

Pulling it all together for the week ending 7 November:

• Positive momentum on community-led regeneration (Meenan Square), tourism projects (Castlewellan, Narrow Water, wider Mournes offers) and transport hubs (Weavers Cross/Belfast Grand Central).
• Structural problems unchanged: key strategic schemes (A5, Casement Park) remain stalled or under legal/funding clouds.
• Planning policy is shifting – more structured consultation expectations and tighter design/placemaking guidance in city-centre areas – which adds both cost and clarity for promoters.
• The market recovery is patchy: public / quasi-public schemes are proceeding; fully private, debt-heavy projects are more likely to pause, re-scope or quietly die at appraisal stage.