Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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442. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government the number of families and persons on the housing waiting list broken down by local authority and showing the same figures for 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013; and the month-on-month increase in different local authorities over the past year. [47207/14]

Alan Kelly (Tipperary North, Labour)
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The latest summary of social housing assessments was carried out as at 7 May 2013 in accordance with section 21 of the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2009 , which provides that the Minister may from “time to time” direct local authorities to prepare a summary of the social housing assessments carried out in their administrative areas. The summary resultsprovide data on the number of households on local authority waiting lists at that date across a range of categories broken down by authority, including the composition of qualified households. The 2013 results are available on my Department’s website at:.

The 2013 figures are the most up-to-date figures available on waiting list numbers, which are subject to on-going fluctuation due to households being allocated housing and new households applying for housing support.  However, the 2013 results cannot be directly compared to previous results given that this latest summary employed different methodologies and was the first to be carried out under the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2009 and the associated 2011 Social Housing Assessment Regulations.

Previous assessments were carried out on a tri-annual basis in accordance with the Housing Act 1988. The results of the 2011 assessment are also available on my Department’s website at:

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In order to get a better picture of the dynamics of the numbers applying for social housing support, future assessments of need under the new social housing assessment system, which came into operation in April 2011, are to be conducted on a more regular basis. The Social Housing Strategy 2020which I launched last month contains a number of actions to reform the delivery an d management of social housing and one such action will be to carry out social housing assessments on an annual basis, commencing in 2016.