COMHAIRLE CONTAE ÁTHA CLIATH THEAS
SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL

MEETING OF SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL

Monday, March 12, 2012

QUESTION NO 6.

QUESTION: Councillor C. Jones

To ask the Manager to give a general overview of the progress of the ASH and the Choice Based Letting Scheme to date?

REPLY:

The Choice Based Letting Scheme was introduced in October 2011.  Since its introduction 71 Units of Accommodation were advertised, of these 39 have been allocated and the remaining 32 have been offered and accepted and will be allocated as soon as pre-let repairs are complete.

ASH was commenced in late 2010 and 400 housing applicants were contacted by the Allocations section which led to:

102 expressions of interest being received, of which

- 65 cases were closed as either agreement could not be reached with property owner or the property was not suitable;

- 26 properties being secured under lease arrangements and tenanted;

- 11 cases are still in process and nearing completion.

The implementation of ASH was then suspended while the staff concentrated all their efforts in putting the required technical and procedural architecture in place to make a success of CBL.

Responsibility for ASH has now transferred to the Procurement Unit and the ASH project was relaunched last week. It will be implemented alongside CBL and will be offered on alternate weeks to 60 applicants north and south of the Naas Road.

60 letters were issued on 24/2/12 to applicants South of Naas Road in order of housing list position advising them of the ASH option. The letters were divided by house size (25 x 3 bed, 25 x 2 bed, 5 x 1 bed and 5 x 4 bed) in order to be fair to all categories of applicant and to ensure that we did not inflate the rental market for any type of house.

To date only 10 responses have been received comprising 8 general queries and 2 applications have been removed from the housing list.

It is planned to continue the implementation of  this scheme by issuing a further 60 ASH letters on Friday 9/3/12 to applicants North of the Naas Road and to continue until we have worked our way through the waiting list.