Written answers

Tuesday, 31 May 2016

Department of Environment, Community and Local Government

Derelict Sites

Photo of Frank O'RourkeFrank O'Rourke (Kildare North, Fianna Fail)
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370. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government the remedies available to local authorities or other State agencies to ensure that property owners of derelict or inhabited buildings in need of repair, both from a structural and an aesthetic perspective, have them restored to an acceptable standard; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [12791/16]

Photo of Simon CoveneySimon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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The Derelict Sites Act 1990 requires local authorities to take all reasonable steps, including the exercise of appropriate statutory powers, to ensure that any land within their functional area does not become, or continue to be, a derelict site. To this end, local authorities have been given substantial powers under the Act in relation to any such sites, including powers to require specified measures to be taken in relation to a derelict site, to impose a levy on sites which are included in the local authority’s derelict sites register, or to compulsorily acquire any derelict site. It is a matter for local authorities to determine the most appropriate use of the legislation within their respective functional areas.

Under section 8(5) of the Act, a copy of the derelict sites register for any local authority can be inspected at the offices of that authority during office hours. This positions members of the public to engage with their local authority in relation to addressing individual derelict sites.

In addition, the Urban Regeneration and Housing Act 2015, which was enacted in September 2015, introduced a vacant site levy, aimed at incentivising the development of vacant and under-utilised sites in urban areas for residential or regeneration development.

Under the provisions of the Act , planning authorities are required to establish and maintain a register of vacant sites in their functional areas with effect from January 2017. From January 2019, the Act further empowers planning authorities to charge a levy on the registered owners of sites that remain on the vacant site register in the preceding year at a rate of 3% of the market value of each site, with reduced or zero rates applying in specific circumstances.

In addition to the foregoing, the Programme for a Partnership Government proposes the examination of a number of planning reforms to regenerate derelict and under-used buildings, including:-introducing a similar scheme to the “Living city Initiative” to regenerate town centres and villages throughout Ireland,

- the establishment of a national register of derelict sites, in addition to the new vacant site levy, to bring vacant and under-utilised sites into beneficial use for housing and urban regeneration purposes,

-mandating local authorities with better land management powers, including the possibility of additional CPO (Compulsory Purchase Order) capabilities, and

-reclassifying and incentivising the use of under utilised or vacant areas over ground floor premises in towns, for both residential and commercial use.

Furthermore, the potential to bring vacant units, in private ownership, back into productive use will be examined in the context of the drafting the forthcoming Action Plan for Housing. All options for the delivery of good quality houses and apartments, particularly in areas that are already serviced, are being examined by my Department.

In relation to vacant local authority units, high priority has been placed on supporting local authorities to return vacant social housing units to productive use for those on the housing waiting list. Between 2014 and 2015, some 5,000 such units were remediated with the support from the Exchequer and were made available to those on housing waiting lists. Work was also carried out by local authorities themselves on vacant houses through normal pre-letting works.

Over the last two years, my Department has provided some €60 million for this purpose. This investment is a very significant support to deal with the backlog of vacant social housing units and a key element in addressing urgent social housing need.

In effect, there is already a considerable range of measures in place aimed at bringing derelict buildings and sites, as well as inhabited buildings in need of repair, into productive use, with potential additional measures being examined so that the issues of dereliction and vacancy can be addressed as comprehensively as possible with a view to assisting in the provision of increased housing supply.

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