At 85 weeks, Cork city has longest turnaround for reletting properties

Cork County also performed poorly for the condition of its regional roads

There has been a steady rise in reletting costs since 2014.

The local government watchdog has expressed concerns about increased social housing reletting times and costs after a report found that Cork city has the longest turnaround time in the country, at 85 weeks.

It follows the publication of the National Oversight and Audit Commission’s (NOAC) 2020 annual report which examined the performance of the State’s 31 local authorities last year across 11 areas, including housing, homelessness, the environment and financial management.

It found local authorities have improved their adult homelessness levels, improved the collection rate of housing loans, stabilised their finances, and decreased staff sick leave. But it noted increased wait time for social housing reletting, increased reletting costs, and it also noted the impact of Covid-19 on local authority services.

Philomena Poole, chair of NOAC’s performance indicator working group, said the public health restrictions increased the challenges local authorities faced in providing essential services, which along with reduced income, all impacted performance under various indicator headings.

“However, reletting time and cost has again increased and although Covid-19 has impacted this area, NOAC notes that there has been a steady rise in reletting costs since 2014, with only a small decrease shown in 2019 compared to the prior year,” she said.

NOAC found that local authorities had 141,128 dwellings in their ownership, a slight decrease on 2019 figures, with a 3.18% vacancy rate on social houses and an average rehousing time of 32.69 weeks.

But in Cork city, the reletting time was 85.08 weeks - the longest in the country - up from 72.12 in 2019. By contrast, the reletting time in Dublin city was just 5.17 weeks.

The council told NOAC that it expects to build some 600 social housing units per year over the next number of years, with over 1,000 units under construction and 500 houses at contract award stage. It has also applied to government for more staff to cope with the housing workload.

Cork county recorded the largest increase in the average reletting time from 23.59 weeks in 2019 to 49.91 weeks in 2020.

The total number of vacant dwellings at the end of 2020 was 4,467 vacancies compared to the 2019 figure of 4,365. 

In an assessment of the condition of regional roads, Cork County performed poorly, along with Laois and Offaly, with over 10% of its regional road network length classed in the poorest condition ranking.

The report found that 81.52% of motor tax transactions were completed online, an increase from 70.21% in 2019, and continuing a steady rise each year from 56.5% in 2015.

It found that local authorities registered 84,942 pollution complaints last year, up on 2019, with nine local authorities recording a decrease in the percentage area unpolluted or litter free, whereas 18 recorded an increase.

As Covid hit their finances, 11 local authorities had a deficit on the Revenue Account at the end of 2020, with all 11 reducing their deficit amount from that in 2019.

And whole-time equivalent staff employed by the local authority sector at the end of 2020 was 29,717.92 - up 1.9% since 2019 - but 11 local authorities showed a reduction in staff numbers. The national average medically certified paid sick leave rate for the sector last year stood at 3.01%, a reduction from 2019.

When NOAC assessed the local authority fire services, it found that for fire-related emergencies, Waterford had for the second year in a row, the quickest response time for full-time services of 57 seconds, seven seconds faster than 2019.

For retained services response times, Sligo, at 3 minutes 17 seconds were the quickest, also for the second time in a row.

Galway County had the slowest response time for full-time services of 2 minutes 06 seconds but improved from 2 minutes 15 seconds in 2019. Kildare at 6 minutes 45 seconds was the slowest for retained services response in respect of fire incidents.

“NOAC was pleased to see that despite the challenges of 2020, local authorities continued to provide essential services and are continuing to develop new approaches to improve their performance,” Mr Poole said.