COMHAIRLE CONTAE ÁTHA CLIATH THEAS
SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL
MEETING OF SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL
Monday, October 10, 2022
QUESTION NO. 15
QUESTION: Councillor Eoin Ó Broin
To ask the Chief Executive for a report on how many inspections of private rental accommodation have taken place in 2022, report to include what percentage of the private rental accommodation in the county this amounts to, and the target desired percentage for all of 2022?
REPLY:
Inspections of private rented properties are primarily carried out on the Council's behalf by external contractors on a planned inspection programme covering properties with Housing Assistance Payment (HAP), Rental Accommodation Scheme (RAS) and Approved Housing Bodies (AHB) tenancies. In addition, Environmental Heath Officers (EHOs) inspect properties where complaints are reported to the Council.
Where properties fail any of the nine regulatory minimum standard items, the landlord will be notified of non-compliance and requested to resolve the issues identified with follow-up inspections arranged as necessary. Several follow-up inspections may be carried out on the property depending on the nature of the non-compliance before a final inspection is undertaken.
The year-to-date figures for inspections carried out as of 28th September 2022 are as follows:
| Category | No. Inspections |
| Planned First Inspections | 1,526 |
| Complaint-Related First inspections | 84 |
| Second/Follow-up Inspections | 952 |
| Total Inspections | 2,562 |
The 2022 annual target for inspections was 4,270, representing 25% of all registered private rented dwellings in the County with 60% of the required inspections achieved to date with 2,562 inspections carried out.
The target rate of 25% annual inspection coverage of all RTB registered private rented properties in each local authority was originally envisaged in the Strategy for the Rental Sector published in 2016. This strategy had the objective of incrementally increasing the number of inspections by 5% each year with the aim of reaching the 25% annual inspections coverage rate by 2021. The 2019 target was 15% coverage which was comfortably exceeded for South Dublin. However, inspections in 2020 and 2021 were significantly impacted with limited numbers of inspections carried out due to lockdown and associated restrictions and this resulted in the targets of 20% for 2020 and 25% for 2021 not being achieved.
Consequently, the 25% target set for all local authorities for 2022 required a significant expansion and upscaling of activity in this work area, out of line with the originally planned incremental increases. Our implementation plan set out the ambition to achieve this challenging target through various measures including increased activity by both our own staff resources and our external inspection contractors together with revised administrative processes.
Unfortunately, despite implementation of certain improvements in processes, the target is it is unlikely that our target will be reached this year. Achieving the projected uplift in activity has been challenging due to the difficulty in restoring and increasing the inspection capacity lost during lockdown, while ongoing challenges with data quality from the RTB and the absence of an IT system for the sector to manage inspections have also impacted output. In addition, our external contractors have also been re-directed to inspect properties pledged for Ukrainian refugees on occasion. These challenges had been signalled with DHLGH in the context of it being difficult to achieve the target set for 2022 inspections. Notwithstanding this, we have recently reviewed activity to date and the capacity of our internal resources, including Environmental Health Officers, and external contractors to increase the output to try to get as close as possible to the target for 2022 in the remaining months of this year and are projecting that we will achieve at least in excess of 90% of the target which will provide a platform for achieving at least the 25% target required in 2023.