Dublin council to seek exemption from plan to end long-term leasing of social housing

Dublin City Council is to seek a derogation from Government policy to continue using long-term leasing deals with private developers for social housing.

The Government’s Housing for All plan published last month commits to ending the practice of leasing social housing, in favour of the ownership of homes by local authorities and housing bodies.

The city council had already committed to leasing more than 400 social homes this year. However, it planned to ramp this up by another 2,500 over next year and 2023.

Senior council housing officials are now to seek talks with the Department of Housing to secure a “dispensation” to allow the council to continue the “judicious” use of leasing in certain circumstances, particularly where it needs to clear old flats for regeneration.

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Long-term leasing schemes of up to 25 years allow the council to rapidly acquire blocks of apartments that can be used to house residents of flat complexes for long periods, particularly when their estates are part of a demolition and rebuild, or “deep retrofit” programme. Up to 8,000 city council flats require substantial work to bring them up to European Union standards. The council last year said the regeneration of Oliver Bond House, one of its largest flat complexes in Dublin city, would take up to 15 years to complete.

‘Valuable route’

In a briefing for councillors on the Housing for All programme Dave Dinnigan, the council's director of housing delivery, said leasing was "a very valuable route for us when we're looking to detenant or decant some of our schemes".

The council accepted leasing needed to be reduced, but “the advantages to us are so immediate that it is hard to resist,” he said.

“We will look for dispensations on [leases] if we can connect them to regeneration schemes because it’s a very fast way in some situations to detenant,” he said. “We would be judicious about the sort of leasing opportunities that come up and attach them to the regenerations.”

Housing for All aims to end the practise of long-term leasing of social housing by 2025 by “phasing out new entrants” to the schemes from now.

The Government earlier this year announced plans to clamp down on house purchases by large investors by increasing stamp duty to 10 per cent on the purchase of more than 10 houses. It subsequently emerged firms would not have to pay the surcharge on bulk-house purchases if they leased them to local authorities.