COMHAIRLE CONTAE ÁTHA CLIATH THEAS
SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL

south dublin county council crest

MEETING OF SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL

Monday, October 12, 2009

QUESTION NO 1.

QUESTION: Councillor S. Crowe

To ask the Manager will he give a report regarding housing maintenance and will he confirm that a Business Process Investigation was completed and outline the revised procedures he proposes to put in place to address the areas where inefficiencies were identified?

REPLY:

The Council has 8963 properties under its control.  121 (1.35%) of them are vacant.   The national average is 4% vacancy.   The average turnaround time for a vacant house currently is 13 weeks compared to17 weeks in January 2009 and the Council will continue to improve the relet time within existing resources.  

During the first two weeks of September Allocations Section awarded 7 new Tenancies and 8 dwellings were surrendered for the same period.    This year  a total of 404 new tenancies  the have been allocated in 2009.  

Re-let repairs occur when a rented house becomes vacant and needs repairs to be carried out before it can be handed over to the next tenant.  Re-let repairs are carried out by a combination of direct labour and works assigned to contractors.

Relets: 2007      2008      2009 (to September)

               159        182          160 

The Housing re-let programme is an area which incorporates the input of Allocations, Estate Management, Anti Social and Tenant Liaison as well as Maintenance / Depot.  Generally speaking the houses handed back are in bad condition and require a variety of repairs to be carried out.  Apart from the physical work to be done to the houses there are often difficulties in allocating some of these houses because of their location and the unwillingness of applicants in receipt of Rent Supplement to move from their current private rented accomodation.  Also when the work is complete there is a need to obtain a BER cert for the property before it can be relet.  These aspects are relevant in the turnaround time.

Housing maintenance is responsible for managing and maintaining the councils rented housing stock. There are two depots from which direct labour maintenance repairs are carried out, one in Jobstown, Tallaght, the other in Unit 10 Crag Avenue Clondalkin.  Maintenance section received 22,964 Maintenance Request Forms (MRF) in 2008.  22,455 or 98% of them were completed.  The average number received per month was 1940.

This year there was a need to achieve resource savings which included a complete elimination of overtime.  A Cost Benefit Analysis is needed to appraise the cost effectiveness of the current process and compare with alternatives.  Key to this is an efficiency appraisal to establish and achieve positive outcomes and more efficient use of existing resources as well as the need to dedicate staff to response maintenance.   A Business Process Investigation has been completed and identified the need for the enhancement of the efficiency and organization of the Housing Depot with improved survey and on-site management protocols together with dedicated teams to deal with the identified and agreed works to be carried out. There is also an identified need to assign staff to pro-active sourcing of tenants at the ealriest possible stage and within the timeframes agreed for the completion of works on the unit. These new procedures can be put in place to improve the operations and can be achieved within existing resources.