Levies on 22 vacant sites in Sligo

A TOTAL of 22 sites in County Sligo, all in or around Sligo town, have been placed on the vacant sites register by Sligo County Council.

Vacant site levies were introduced as part of the Urban Regeneration and Housing Act 2015 with the aim of discouraging landowners with land suitable for housing from leaving sites undeveloped. Owners of land listed on vacant site registers on January 1, 2018 were liable to pay a levy of 3% of the market value of the property, rising to 7% in 2019.

But the Irish Mail on Sunday claimed that one in three councils failed to raise a single cent in derelict site levies the year before the pandemic hit. They reported that figures supplied by Junior Housing Minister Peter Burke in response to a parliamentary question from Sinn Féin TD Thomas Gould indicated that the initiative was not being implemented in up to half of the country’s local authorities.

The newspaper reported that Mr Burke confirmed that 12 councils, including Sligo, did not impose a single vacant site levy in 2019.

However, in response to a query on the matter from the Sligo Weekender, a Sligo County Council spokesperson said that at the end of 2019 (i.e. pre-pandemic), Sligo was one of only 17 local authorities to have established a Vacant Sites Register.

The spokesperson said that in 2020, demands for payment of vacant site levies had been issued on 17 sites with a further five sites being the subject of appeals to the Valuations Tribunal.