Council to spend €9m on repairs and energy upgrades of its housing stock

Meath County Council will spend over €9m on housing in 2024 on ongoing and planned maintenance, as well as pre-let repairs and energy upgrades of its housing stock.

An overview of the schedule of works for Meath for 2024 was outlined to Trim councillors at their February meeting. Works include ordinary maintenance, planned maintenance, maintenance of boilers, halting site maintenance repairs, pre-let, energy upgrades and local authority adaptation works. Funding for the works comes from both the annual revenue budget of Meath Co Council and central grants from the Department of Housing.

While all grant figures are not yet confirmed, Meath Co Council has projected spending of €9.16m for 2024 with €6.3m coming from its own resources and €2.8m from grants. The estimated grant funding includes €1.3m for energy upgrades.

The council has also allocated €480,000 for preventative maintenance. The biggest outlay in the budget overall is for pre-let repairs with €2.7m earmarked, while €2.5m has been allocated for ordinary maintenance. A sum of €262,000 has been earmarked for halting site maintenance. Other figures include €345,000 for maintenance of boilers, €750,000 for planned maintenance and €570,000 for local authority adaptation works.

In total, Meath Co Council has 3,981 social housing units with the greatest number of these (1,062) in the Navan Municipal District. There are 818 units in Kells MD, 675 in Trim MD, 658 in Laytown/Bettystown MD, 536 in Ratoath and the smallest number is in the Ashbourne MD where there are 232 units.

From the overall €9m housing budget, €3.14m million will be divided among the six MD areas for maintenance and servicing as follows: Navan €984,658; Kells €595,664; Trim €536,057; Laytown/Bettystown €476,740; Ratoath €388,347; Ashbourne €168,091.

The remaining €6m is for the centralised budget and will be spent based on need/demand for 2024 rather than allocations being made for each municipal district area. The funding is for categories including pre-let repairs, planned maintenance, adaptation works, energy upgrades and preventative maintenance.

Planned maintenance includes upgrading windows and doors, fascia and soffits, kitchens, central heating boilers and water treatment systems in rural areas.

In terms of pre-let repairs, once properties become vacant, they are inspected to determine the condition and a schedule of works is prepared before it can be reallocated. Last year works were completed on 93 units with funding secure for 92 units through the Voids Stimulus Programme 2023. This included 22 units in Trim.

The Local Authority Adaptation Works Scheme is a scheme to assist tenants to address mobility problems primarily associated with medical need or works necessary to make a house more suitable for a person with a disability. Works were carried out on 74 units around the country under the scheme last year with a total expenditure of €645,000 which is 90 per cent funded by the Department of Housing.

Nationally funding of €87m was available for the Energy Refit programme for social housing stock to bring them to a B2 energy rating with Meath Co Council receiving funding of €1.25m from this funding in 2023. Funding of €1.3m is expect in 2024.

During a discussion on the energy retrofitting and installation of heat pumps, Cllr Trevor Golden asked if in some cases tenants don't want to go ahead with the works and was told that in some cases people did want to retain their open fires.

He said some elderly people they may not want people coming in to change things and they had to be respectful of that.