Storage warehousing, Bushmills Distillery.

Expansion of Bushmills Distillery to accommodate additional storage warehouses of circa. 12,000sq. metres, plus associated firewater pumphouse and tanks.

Issues Encountered

• Dealing with a difficult sensitive site on high ground. Large warehouses were proposed on a site that is located in the countryside outside Bushmills settlement limit, within the Causeway Coast Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, adjacent to Dundarave Local Landscape Policy Area, and within the supportive landscape setting of the Giant’s Causeway World Heritage Site.

• Planning permission required within tight timeline.

Our Involvement

We provided planning consultancy service to Diageo, which involved leading the architectural team and client from initial design stage followed by pre-application discussions with Departmental officials to reaching a formal planning approval notice.

Pre-application discussions around the table allowed all relevant parties to raise issues early on in the design process so that the client’s team could consider resolving any significant issues upfront prior to lodging a planning application. This resulted in obtaining full planning permission for storage warehouses on a sensitive difficult site in around 4 months from submission.