Planning permission has been granted for the Bushmills Dunes Golf Resort and Spa.

The £100million proposed development is expected to create 360 new jobs. It includes an 18–hole golf course and hotel and conference facility, and will be built close to Bushmills and Portballintrae on the North Antrim coast.

The Environment Minister said “this has been a demanding decision and I have not taken it lightly. Before deciding, I wanted to ensure that I was fully aware of the environmental aspects of the proposal – the likely impact on the setting of the World Heritage Site at Giant’s Causeway, the Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and the local wildlife – and so recently spent time at the site assessing it from a number of different vantage points including the system of sand dunes. I particularly interrogated the issues around World Heritage status, the role of the World Heritage Centre (WHC)/UNESCO and the approach that may be taken by the WHC. I have acted with a high vigilance and challenging approach.”

Ian Binnie from the Causeway Coast Communities Consortium said his concern was not the golf course itself, but the environmental impact of the rest of the plans.  “It is the amount of associated building,” he said.  “A 120–bedroom hotel, a large clubhouse, a golf academy and 75 self–catering lodges which are actually separate houses.  “That is a huge amount of built development within a protected area around the Giant’s Causeway.”

James Orr of Friends of the Earth condemned Mr Attwood’s decision.  “Planning policies for that area are very clear – the landscape around the Giant’s Causeway should be protected,” he said.

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