£4.5m bill for upkeep of empty buildings
Exclusive: Years of ‘ridiculous’ Stormont spending on unused properties revealed
MORE than £4.5m has been spent by Stormont departments on empty buildings in the last five years, it can be revealed.
Some have been lying derelict for decades.
They include the old Regional Government HQ in Ballymena, a cold war nuclear bunker for VIPS which has been empty since 1995. Its maintenance has cost Arlene Foster and Michelle O’neill’s Executive Office more than £73,000 over five years.
More than £1.25m in rates and in excess of £3.3m in maintenance across the nine Stormont departments has been spent on such sites.
The Department for Communities had the highest expenditure of all the departments, with a total spend of almost £2m across more than 100 properties.
Hitting out at the huge bill, SDLP MLA Colin Mcgrath said: “If we’re forking out more than £4.5m, it’s just ridiculous”.
STORMONT departments have spent more than £4.5m on empty buildings — some of which have been vacant for decades — in the last five years, it can be revealed.
Figures compiled by the Belfast Telegraph show that more than £1.25m in rates and in excess of £3.3m in maintenance across the nine government departments has been spent on such sites.
Only one department — the Department for the Economy — owns no vacant properties.
The situation has led to calls for a review into all government-owned vacant property to assess what is needed and what is not.
While several properties owned by the various departments are in differing stages of regeneration or sale, many have been lying dormant for years with no sign of being used in the near future.
The Department for Communities had the highest expenditure of all departments, with a total spend of almost £2m across more than 100 properties. This is comprised of £89,000 in rates and £1,888,117 in maintenance.
Second-highest in spending was the Department of Education, spending more than £1.5m on some 57 empty properties since the 2016/17 financial year. Of this, £787,000 went towards rates, while £713,000 was spent on maintenance.
The Department of Health, which spent some £388,000 on 10 buildings and plots of land — including £133,000 in rates and £38,314 in maintenance — came in third.
Next was Infrastructure, racking up a bill of £285,000 over the same period for almost 20 properties. A total of £104,000 went towards rates and maintenance cost £181,000.
The Department of Justice paid for the upkeep of five vacant buildings. Some £16,000 went towards rates and £144,000 was spent on maintenance.
Coming in with a bill of £130,000 across a dozen properties, including £43,000 in rates and £87,000 in maintenance, was the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA).
The department with the second lowest spend on vacant properties was Finance, which spent a total of £107,166 on six sites since 2016/17.
Finally, the Executive Office spent a total of £84,896 on 16 properties. This includes £11,482 in rates that were paid in error over four years and £73,414 in maintenance.
SDLP MLA Colin Mcgrath, who tabled a series of Assembly questions regarding the vacant buildings, said the situation needs to be reviewed to ensure taxpayer money is not being wasted.
“Based on these figures the absolute minimum we need to be looking at is an assessment by the Department of Finance that is going to look at all vacant government property and assess — ‘is this needed, can it be disposed of?’ — because if we’re forking out more than £4.5m it’s just ridiculous,” he told the Belfast Telegraph.
“Now, some of it is circular money, because, for instance, the Department of Education may have a vacant property and they’re paying rates. Well, the money comes from the Department of Finance, on to Education, who pay rates back to Finance and then they recoup it. So some of the money stays in government circles.
“But, there is bound to be an admin cost that goes with facilitating that circular motion. At the very least as well, I would expect an assessment regarding if they actually generate bills? Do they post bills? Do they go through their finance department and then the bills are sent back to the Department of Finance? After all, it’s their own money.”
He said the DOF should be able to put a system in place where rates bills issued to government buildings have a special coding so, in effect, the bills don’t actually have to be sent, “otherwise it’s just going round in circles and costing more money”.
“Maintenance is a bigger issue, because you are maintaining building that you are not using. We need an urgent assessment done as to whether or not these buildings are required,” he said.