444 ‘bad neighbour' complaints in South Cork

Cork County Council has investigated 444 complaints about alleged “neighbours from hell” in the past three years in its southern division alone. It has repossessed 21 homes from antisocial tenants.

The figures were released by the council’s director of housing, Maurice Manning, at a meeting in County Hall. This followed a query about the activities of staff in the local authority who deal with anti-social tenants.

Mr Manning said two full-time staff were dedicated to the estates management department, which covers Youghal, Midleton, Glanmire, Blarney, Carrigaline, Ballincollig, Kinsale, Bandon and Macroom.

The council owns 3,200 homes in that division.

There have been 139 complaints about anti-social behaviour so far this year, while there were 137 in 2016, and 168 the previous year.

The highest number of repossessions occurred in 2015, when there were 12. There were seven in 2016, and just two so far this year.

There was mediation amongst tenants 113 times this year, 42 times last year, and 37 times in 2015.

The information was sought by Cllr Des O’Grady, who said that if there were just two people in the council’s antisocial behaviour unit, they were obviously overworked. Cllr O’Grady said one of them had retired earlier this month and still had not been replaced, which he felt was unsatisfactory. He added that they had no back-up staff to help them.

Cllr Michael Hegarty proposed that inspections of council-owned properties be more frequent to ensure tenants maintain them properly. He said that would be money well spent, as some tenants had been thrown out of houses because they had wrecked them.

Mr Manning said a major survey of all council houses would be undertaken next year.

Cllr Noel Collins said he was disappointed by long delays in repairing council houses that have been vacated, especially as there was a housing crisis.

Cllr O’Grady agreed with him, saying: “We have people dying on the streets. We need to upscale the amount of houses we are building.”

However, Cllr Seamus McGrath said that there had been progress in doing-up houses that had been vacant for a long time. He said there were 43 so-called long-term voids in May, 2015, but, as of this month, that had been whittled down to 20.

Meanwhile, Mr Manning said the council was in constant liaison with the Department of Housing for approval to buy private houses for people on the waiting list.

He said the department had so far given funding for 60 houses to be purchased and said he expected this to have risen to 100 by the close of the financial year.

Funding has also been acquired for the construction of 110 ‘turnkey’ homes acquired from developers.

Mr Manning said a contract is expected to be signed shortly for the construction of 49 social houses at Kilnaglearly, Carrigaline.