Question over high standard of house repairs
A Wexford councillor has wondered whether the District Council is spending too much money unnecessarily on repairs and alterations to local authority homes before they are re-let.
During the presentation of a services report by housing engineer Mick Doyle, Cllr. George Lawlor questioned the level of repairs carried out and the standard that the local authority is trying to achieve before homes are re-allocated, compared to the private sector.
He said the Council seemed to be spending an ‘inordinate amount of money’ in bringing houses up to a ‘state-of-the-art’ standard and he asked if there was any way the cost could be reduced.
‘We seem to be providing pristine conditions for people when they are moving into houses’.
Cllr. Lawlor said tenants who needed homes urgently were having to wait longer while comprehensive repairs were undertaken.
The engineer replied that the average amount spent in Wexford in 2016 was approximately €6.500 per house when the repairs were carried out by Council staff and it rose to €17,000 if the work went to a contractor. ‘We are getting good value for money’, he said
Mr. Doyle said that in 2014 when there was a smaller housing stock, the turn-around for pre-let repairs was a month but there has been a big increased in the number of houses over the past few years and the turnaround is now 19 weeks and he hoped that this would soon be reduced to 12 weeks.
Cllr. Tom Forde and Cllr. Tony Walsh said they had heard of cases where whole kitchens were ripped out and new ones put in and bathroom tiles removed when the old ones appeared to be perfectly fine.
Cllr. David Hynes said the provision of state-of-the-art facilities in one house often leads to annoyance among other tenants because they don’t enjoy the same standard.
Mr. Doyle said the local authority won’t rip out a kitchen unless there is a need to do so but sometimes a kitchen will look okay from a cursory glance and on closer inspection, the back boards are gone and it is beyond repair.
‘The instructions are that if the kitchen is saveable, it’s kept but I can see your point’, he said.
‘On transfer, a tenant should really give the house back the way they got it but you go in and the attic is full of stuff and the shed is filled with domestic waste’.
The Wexford District has 1483 housing units including 37 leased properties. The average amount of repairs carried out annually is €753 per house.
Among the continuous improvement services carried out by the housing department for local authority houses are replacement of kitchens (there were 31 replacements in the county in 2017 at a cost of €54,000 not including pre-let replacements), sweeping chimneys, putting in new windows, providing sheds, replacing fascias and gutters, windows and gates as well as energy retro-fitting.