17 Aug 2026

Two Councils Have Spoken. Now Their Local Development Plans Need to Say the Same Thing

Portaferry and Strangford sit 0.6 nautical miles apart, separated by the Narrows and by an accident of local government history. Since 1 April 2015, Portaferry has been the responsibility of Ards and North Down Borough Council, and Strangford has been the responsibility of Newry, Mourne and Down District Council. Two councils, two Local Development Plans, one Lough between them.

On the political question, both Councils have already answered, and answered the same way. This is not a call for them to agree with each other; that has been done. It is a call for that agreement to survive the journey from the council chamber into the statutory planning documents both Councils are drafting right now, before those documents are adopted and the moment to include it has passed.

That distinction matters because the Department for Infrastructure has made the underlying process depend on it. In its letter of 24 October 2025 (reference TOF-0467-2025), DfI’s Head of Consultancy Services, Ian McClung, told this campaign directly that the Eastern Transport Plan 2035, the strategic document DfI itself says is “more relevant to any new permanent linkage between Strangford and Portaferry” than the Regional Strategic Transport Network, “will be developed in a phased approach, in alignment with the publication of the draft Local Development Plan for the two councils in question, Ards and North Down, and, Newry, Mourne and Down.”

In plain terms: the Department has tied its own transport planning for this crossing to the pace and content of two separate council plans. If those two plans say different things, or one is silent where the other engages, the Department has been handed a ready-made excuse to do nothing. Both Councils have removed one possible excuse already, by resolving in unanimous, cross-party terms that a study should happen. The remaining excuse, a gap between what the councils have said politically and what their planning documents actually contain, is still open, and this campaign’s plain message to both Councils is that it should be closed while their Plan Strategies are still in preparation.

Where each Local Development Plan currently stands

Both authorities are still working through Stage 2 of the statutory LDP process, the preparation of the draft Plan Strategy, the first of two documents (Plan Strategy, then Local Policies Plan) that will together become each Council’s new Local Development Plan.

Ards and North Down Borough Council published its draft Plan Strategy for LDP 2032 on 26 September 2025. The original consultation ran from 17 October to 15 December 2025. Following an administrative error, the Council launched a fresh statutory reconsultation from 16 January to 16 March 2026, and a further eight-week counter-consultation period on representations received ran from 8 May to 7 July 2026, which has now closed. The Council is currently analysing the representations ahead of formal submission to DfI and Independent Examination.

Newry, Mourne and Down District Council launched its draft Plan Strategy for LDP 2035 on 27 June 2025, with a twelve-week consultation closing 22 September 2025. The Council describes itself as continuing to prepare this document ahead of eventual submission to DfI and Independent Examination.

Neither Plan Strategy has been adopted. Neither Local Policies Plan, the second-stage document where site-specific proposals and safeguarded corridors would actually be set out, has yet begun. Until adoption, both council areas continue to be governed for day-to-day planning decisions by the same legacy instrument, the Ards and Down Area Plan 2015, adopted with effect from 30 March 2009, which covers Portaferry through its former Ards Borough volume and Strangford through its former Down District volume.

The political alignment already exists. The planning alignment does not, yet.

At political level, both Councils have now spoken, and spoken unanimously. Ards and North Down Borough Council passed a motion, proposed by Alderman Robert Adair, calling on the Council to write to Minister Kimmins to prioritise funding for a feasibility study; this passed at committee on 10 March 2026 ahead of ratification by full council. Newry, Mourne and Down District Council followed just over a month later: on 13 April 2026, the Council unanimously agreed a motion proposed by Cllr Callum Bowsie (DUP, Rowallane), likewise resolving to write to Minister Kimmins requesting funding for a feasibility study into a bridge between Strangford and Portaferry. Councillor Helena Young (Alliance) and Councillor David Taylor (UUP) both spoke in support during that debate. Sinn Féin MP Chris Hazzard welcomed the outcome, describing it as building on the Ards and North Down motion of the previous month.

That is genuine, hard-won cross-lough and cross-party alignment, and this campaign is glad to acknowledge it plainly. But a council resolution and a Local Development Plan are two different instruments. A resolution is a one-off political statement to the Minister. A Local Development Plan is the enduring, statutory document that will shape both Councils’ transportation policy, and any future safeguarding of land or corridors, for a decade or more. The alignment achieved at resolution level in March and April 2026 has not yet been mirrored inside either Council’s draft Plan Strategy. That is the gap this campaign is now asking both Councils to close.

What “singing in unison” should mean in practice

This campaign is not asking either Council to commit to a bridge. Neither Council needs to take a position on the outcome of a study that has not yet been commissioned. What this campaign is asking is more modest, and entirely within the gift of both Councils acting together:

Consistent treatment in both draft Plan Strategies. Each Council’s transportation chapter should reference the Strangford Lough Crossing in the same terms, as a strategic connectivity matter warranting further assessment through the Eastern Transport Plan 2035 process, rather than one Plan Strategy engaging with it and the other remaining silent. Neither current draft Plan Strategy yet carries wording reflecting the resolutions both Councils have already passed.
A joint or parallel submission to the Eastern Transport Plan 2035 consultation, when it opens, explicitly referencing the crossing as a scheme requiring further development and appraisal, in the same terms from both Councils, so that the alignment already achieved in the council chamber is carried through into the statutory transport planning process DfI itself says is the relevant vehicle.
Continued engagement with each other, not solely through DfI, on the timing of their respective Local Policies Plans, so that neither shore’s safeguarding position on a future crossing corridor is left several years behind the other.
A joint follow-up to Minister Kimmins noting that both Councils have now written to her independently, and asking for a single, combined response addressing both letters together, rather than two separate replies drafted months apart.

None of this pre-empts the outcome of a feasibility study. It simply ensures that when DfI is next asked why nothing has moved, the Department cannot point to a gap between Portaferry and Strangford that its own correspondence created in the first place.

Four months of silence is itself worth noting

Both letters to Minister Kimmins are now some months old. Ards and North Down Borough Council’s followed its resolution in late March 2026. Newry, Mourne and Down District Council’s followed on 13 April 2026. As at the date of this post, this campaign is not aware of any published, substantive departmental response to either letter, and DfI’s own news pages show no announcement addressing them. Two unanimous, cross-party council resolutions, on either side of the same stretch of water, appear to have received no public answer in four months. That is not a criticism of either Council; both have done what was asked of them. It is a fair question for the Department.

The underlying case, briefly

The economic argument for gathering the evidence, as opposed to a decision to build anything, rests on facts already in DfI’s own disclosed documents. Freedom of Information disclosure DFI-2024-0412 shows the Department’s own internal cost estimate for a crossing has been described in its own papers as a “guesstimate.” Around 29,000 vehicles a day travel the roads around Strangford Lough, while only around 650 a day use the ferry, a gap this campaign treats as suppressed demand rather than absence of demand, properly qualified against named DfI traffic count points. Comparator schemes such as the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Bridge and the Cleddau Bridge show that fixed crossings of this kind can be delivered at costs and demand growth rates very different from the figures DfI has cited. None of this proves a bridge should be built. It is precisely why an independent, TAG-compliant feasibility study, costed at £250,000 to £500,000 depending on scope, is the proportionate next step, not a leap to construction.

A modest, unglamorous ask

There is nothing dramatic left to ask of two local councils that have already, independently and unanimously, reached the same political conclusion. What remains is narrower and more procedural: carrying that alignment through into the statutory planning documents both Councils are drafting right now, so the political consensus of March and April 2026 is not left stranded outside the Plan Strategy text once those documents are adopted. That is exactly the kind of unglamorous, administrative discipline that closes off the room DfI currently has to play one process off against another, and it is time-limited, since both Plan Strategies are still open to amendment now in a way they will not be once adopted. A commercial operator run on tight margins would not tolerate two branches of the same business quietly working to different scripts on the same customer question, having already agreed the answer, and would not wait four months for a reply either. Local government, and the Department that oversees it, should not either.

For the full evidential archive behind this campaign, including the primary DfI correspondence referenced above, visit

www.strangfordloughcrossing.org.

Sources

DfI correspondence reference TOF-0467-2025, 24 October 2025, signed by Ian McClung, Head of Consultancy Services, DfI TRAM. Campaign project archive.
Ards and North Down Borough Council, Local Development Plan 2032, Draft Plan Strategy, published 26 September 2025; reconsultation notice 16 January to 16 March 2026; counter-consultation notice 8 May to 7 July 2026. ardsandnorthdown.gov.uk.
Newry, Mourne and Down District Council, Local Development Plan 2035, Draft Plan Strategy, launched 27 June 2025; consultation closed 22 September 2025. newrymournedown.org.
Ards and Down Area Plan 2015, adopted, operative 30 March 2009 (Department of the Environment / Planning Service). planningni.gov.uk archive.
‘Council backs call for “feasibility study” of bridge over Strangford Lough’, The Irish News, 10 March 2026 (Ards and North Down Borough Council committee motion, Alderman Robert Adair).
‘”Overwhelming” support for bridge at Strangford Lough’, Newtownards Chronicle, 12 March 2026.
‘Council backs Strangford Bridge feasibility study’, The Down Recorder, 22 April 2026 (Newry, Mourne and Down District Council motion of 13 April 2026, Cllr Callum Bowsie).
‘Strangford Lough councils unite to back £300 million crossing’, The Irish News, 16 April 2026.
‘Hazzard Says Strangford Bridge Support Positive’, Down News, 15 April 2026.
‘NI Councils Back Feasibility Study into Strangford Lough Bridge’, Afloat.ie, 20 April 2026.
Freedom of Information disclosure DFI-2024-0412 (Attachment, 7 August 2024), Mark McPeak, cleared by David Porter, 30 August 2024.
Sub-Regional Economic Plan Technical Annex, October 2024, NI Executive.

Note on figures

Press coverage of both council motions refers to a “£300 million bridge.” This is the figure being reported for construction of the crossing itself, and should not be confused with the campaign’s costed ask for the feasibility study, £250,000 to £500,000 depending on scope, per specialist industry advice in the campaign project file. The two figures serve entirely different purposes and this distinction should be preserved in any further use of this material.