Forty-one vacant social homes returned to active use in Mayo last year
The Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Darragh O’Brien, today published figures showing Mayo County Council brought 41 vacant social homes back into active use under the Voids Programme.
The council recouped €451,000 from the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage in 2022 through the Voids Programme, which supports local authorities in preparing vacant homes for re-letting.
Nationally last year, 2,307 vacant social homes were brought back into active use under the Voids Programme. This is just above the anticipated figure of 2,273 vacant social homes, indicating that the intensive work in 2020 and 2021 by local authorities in this area has reduced the number of vacant social homes.
Making more efficient use of existing housing stock is a key action in the government’s Housing for All plan. The Voids Programme builds on the ongoing work to tackle vacancy and dereliction and bring vacant properties into re-use for housing.
Minister O’Brien said: “Apart from the obvious advantages of meeting demand for social housing, the return of these 41 vacant homes in Mayo has a positive impact on communities and avoids vacant homes becoming run down and derelict, in some instances, and the source of anti-social behaviour.
“Mayo County Council seized the opportunity to bring these homes back into active use in 2022 and this will make a real difference to the lives of 41 households.
“It’s important to note and welcome the fact that nationally the number of vacant social homes requiring pre-letting works was lower in 2022 than in 2021 or 2020. This clearly shows that our plan is working. In 2020 and 2021 we spent more than €88 million bringing 6,032 vacant social homes back into use, and evidently we are reducing the number of voids in need of refurbishment works following those two intense years of tackling vacancy.
“We are now progressively shifting to a position of planned maintenance of social housing stock to ensure minimal turnaround and re-let times for social housing stock.”
In 2022, local authorities recouped almost €29 million in funding for stock improvement programmes for the refurbishment of vacant local authority-owned social housing. Of the €28.9 million, €3.6 million supported the transition to planned maintenance and included funding towards stock condition surveys.
Local authorities are continuing to transition from a response-based approach to a strategic and informed planned maintenance approach to social housing. This is based on stock condition surveys. The planned maintenance/voids programme in 2022 supported this.