Mr. Pat Fitzpatrick:

I thank the Chairman and committee for the privilege of contributing today. I would like to deal with the need for recruitment of appropriate technical staff to ensure delivery of social housing projects.

Due to the previous moratorium on recruitment in the public sector, local authorities have lost invaluable technical staff over recent years and the loss of such experience is also leading to delays in progressing some social housing projects. While acknowledging the moratorium was lifted in 2015, local authorities are still experiencing difficulty in recruiting the appropriate technical staff needed to progress some social housing projects because of the lack of the necessary funding. We propose that funding for appropriate technical staff would be included in the capital costs of housing projects to ensure no housing projects are delayed due to a lack of technical expertise. Short-term contracts to recruit appropriate technical staff should be afforded on specific social housing projects, if necessary, to ensure these projects are commenced and delivered without delays. We also propose that the shared services model currently operating successfully in the local government environment should be employed to scale up rapidly the input of specialist housing personnel. Design and planning teams could be assembled in a number of core local authorities with their services available across county boundaries to other local authorities. This approach was used to good effect in the early years of the national motorway programme where a design team was assembled in a given county and its expertise deployed to other counties to create a flexible and rapid response to the need for expertise in accelerating the building programme.

I would also like to deal with urban renewal and housing. There is a strong correlation between the provision of housing and the addressing of another major contemporary issue, that is, bringing life back into the centres of our towns and cities. Many towns have been hollowed out with only small numbers of people living in town centres. At the same time, derelict and vacant sites are often located in or close to the town centres. While freeing up land in private ownership is a challenging issue, nonetheless there would seem to be great potential for innovative infill provision of accommodation in locations which, by definition, are well served by public utilities.

Schemes embracing various kinds of accommodation from one-bedroom apartments to three-storey houses would help to make maximum use of inner urban land while at the same bringing a sustainable population back into town centre locations.

I will now hand over to my colleague, Councillor Pat Daly.