Plans to attract investment in social housing

Plans to attract private investment in social and affordable housing are being drawn up by Minister for the Environment Alan Kelly.

The Minister also intends to give local authorities greater autonomy in the delivery of social housing.

Under the plan, local authorities will be given “almost full discretion” to plan and deliver social housing projects of fewer than 20 units.

This would significantly speed up the delivery of smaller housing projects around the State, Mr Kelly said.

At present local authorities must submit detailed proposals for housing projects to the Department of the Environment, apply for capital funding and justify all spending, with repeated reviews throughout the process.

Mr Kelly says smaller schemes should require only initial approval from the department with power to proceed devolved to the authorities.

"Effectively, if X county council wants to build houses [currently] there's a process which they have to go through whereby they make the submission, we give them the allocation then they have to come in with their designs and plans. It's a long process. There's a whole lot of layers," he told The Irish Times.

Taxpayers’ money

“So what we are proposing to do is if they are below a certain size of development – 15 to 20 houses, somewhere around there is what we are looking at – they submit to us. And instead of coming to us with every stage of design, effectively they will submit their initial application, we will go through it in detail obviously, it is taxpayers’ money – and we’ll just devolve it to them and let them get on with it.”

Such a move “takes a layer away” and gives greater autonomy to local authorities to make their own decisions, he added.

“That’s a good thing. They know their tenant requirement better than I would.”

Mr Kelly said he intended to put the measures in place early this year.

Rental income

The Minister is also looking at models to attract private investment in social and affordable housing. One would see approved housing bodies working with private investors to deliver social housing to local authorities. Investors would be guaranteed a percentage of rental income for a defined period.

“We are creating this process now for bringing in private investment. I hope to launch a new scheme in relation to investment in social housing in the near future – a new process for bringing in investors, a protocol scheme by which people can come to work with us, work with local authorities and approved housing bodies.

“There will be loads of different modelling of how we can do it, not just one model.”

Mr Kelly said the speed of the delivery of housing was an issue the department was grappling with. Though more social housing projects had been approved in the last 12-month period than in any other “in the history of the department”, it could still take three years from initial proposal to delivery, he said.

“There is a three-year delay when it comes to building houses, from the planning to tendering and the whole process. Private isn’t much quicker than public . . . We need to do things quicker.”