*Gordon Daly. Photograph: Eamon Ward
HOUSING delivery and activation is the big focus of Clare County Council’s new Chief Executive but no extra staff have yet been allocated to the housing unit of the local authority.
Ratified as the Chief Executive of Clare County Council in April, Tuamgraney’s Daly engaged in a listening exercise since taking on the role in May before announcing structural changes to the organisation in September.
For his most in-depth interview since taking on the role, the former senior planner was joined by Council Head of Communications, Claire Gallagher when fielding questions from The Clare Echo.
Structural changes to the Council have been in place since the beginning of October. They include a newly established Housing Delivery, Infrastructure Provision and Land Activation Directorate. This will include a dedicated Housing Activation Unit.
As was evident in his first meeting at the top table in June, housing is top of his agenda. Clare County Council is doing a lot when it comes to housing but it can do more was his viewpoint, “we’ve targets to 2026 which we will exceed, our targets are over 800 for social and affordable housing, we are on target to deliver approximately 1200 so there is a lot of positive things happening in that space. We already have a housing stock of over 3,000 units in the ownership of the local authority, in addition Clare has been one of the most successful counties in the vacant homes refurbishment grants so Clare has successfully processed 433 applications in the last couple of years which is 433 homes that will be refurbished across the county, that is a grant award to those of approximately €26m”. He added, “we are already doing a lot but what we are trying to do and the focus on housing is to do more”.
Efforts to “do more” will see the Council pivot to try activate private housing and co-operative housing rather than just social and affordable which is it statutorily obliged to provide. To do this, housing delivery infrastructure provision activation directorate has been created. “I’m bringing three already very strong teams within Clare County Council, the housing capital team, the general capital team and the vacant homes/derelict sites team in under one directorate and one director to give a really targeted focused approach on housing and infrastructure delivery because the infrastructure delivery whether it is roads or whatever it is also impacts on housing”.
This housing activation unit “will be new, it will need staffing and it will take time to get it embedded,” he said. There are “key elements” to the directorate which include dealing with all key agencies that impact on housing delivery and infrastructure, utilising rural and community development officers to determine the housing need in communities across Clare and engaging the building sector by hosting housing summits.
Provision of serviced sites and selling parcels of land to private developers are among the ways the amount of private housing can be accelerated in Clare, he believed. “Some of the larger local authorities in bigger urban areas have done this for social housing, we’re servicing it and taking the risk out of it and maybe selling a parcel on to a builder and then they are paying it back as they build houses, we don’t have all the answers on this yet but what we’re trying to do is look at national and international best practice in terms of how we can activate all forms of housing and acknowledging there are some parts of the county that don’t have that challenge, it is not universal, there are communities where a good bit of housing has been built with a different set of challenges where they may be struggling with services, facilities and will need different solutions in order to do that, it is not a one size fits all or even across the county, the ultimate outcome is trying to get real balanced growth development across the county”.
Increasing the amount of housing stock in Clare will do a lot more than put roofs over heads, Gordon stressed. “Why I’m putting so much emphasis on housing, obviously it is a national priority and people need homes but it is awfully underestimated the enabler that housing is, if you have issues with town regeneration, housing is an enabler to get more people living in town centres, that will drive footfall to drive businesses which will retain people. Housing in itself yes we can house people and give them homes but it gives a dividend, an enabler and a multiplier effect, particularly with rural depopulation the only way we’re going to address it, we’ve a lot of excellent work done in this county in recent years on rural and community development to enhance facilities, improve broadband, bus services but you must have people to sustain those and the only way you can have people is if you have housing, we’ve got to stimulate that market, if it isn’t provided by the private market we need to understand why and see what we can do to stimulate it”. He added that it will also improve economic development, “we talk to the companies who want to invest in Co Clare and they will talk about housing first and that they are happy to invest in Clare, there is a sense that if the region and county can get on top of housing and housing supply that could have a competitive advantage in terms of attracting more inward investment”.
No extra staff have been drafted in to match their enhanced housing ambitions. “In time that is the plan, there is an ability to pivot some staff towards this area and to use the wider resources of the organisation, we often heard the term ‘a whole of Government approach’, this key priority of accelerating housing delivery, an increased investment on infrastructure is a Council-wide priority, it is a Council-wide mandate to deliver on this and it requires the input of elected members but other sections of the Council whether it is planning, transport, rural community development officers who are equipped to go out and discuss with communities, we have senior managers in our Municipal Districts so we will try bring this down to the most local level possible, one size won’t fit all.
“Ideally in time we would have a housing activation plan for each parish in the county, in the same way we’ve had community plans for each of these but they have tended not to focus on the housing elements. Because there has been such excellent work done by the local authority and communities over the last ten years, we’ve wonderful communities who have invested so much in a voluntary effort developing their communities and resilience that these are really attractive places to live in and the missing ingredient is housing and people so when people are living there they find that most of what they want is there and what might not be there will come if there are more people”.
Putting a deadline for each parish and area to have their own housing activiation plan “is difficult,” he admitted. “We provide 1000 services, we have all sorts of other functions, all of those will keep happening but in terms of additionality, this is where there is a need and this is something Clare County Council have done very well in the past, we said we needed to focus more on rural development and we’ve done, when we needed to focus more on tourism development we’ve done that and done it successfully, now we’re saying with those building blocks and in a situation where we have a new programme for Government, a revised National Planning Framework, an updated National Development Plan and they are all pointing towards this national priority. All the national supports are there and are pointed towards addressing this issue so we have to as much as we can deal with issues in our control. For targets of completion of plans, number of units, the next key step for me is making sure we have the structures in place in order to do this, it will take a bit of time to do that, even when Government when it sets up a housing activation office or infrastructure division it takes time, at least we know where the priorities are and we have a clear sense of direction how to get there, it will take time but these issues won’t be resolved overnight”.
When asked how the County Council will secure more funding to build more houses, he stated, “That is why I’m making the distinction. We already have a social and affordable housing building programme, that will continue and that very well established and successful pillar is there, that funding comes from Central Government. The fact we’ve such an existing excellent housing delivery team and that they are ahead of their targets from Government, their targets for 2026 are 833 units but we’re projected to do in excess of 1100 given our pipeline, other local authorities may not be meeting their targets so they are under pressure to do that.
“We have built up a lot of expertise and knowledge in that area, I want to use some of that to see how we can unlock private housing because that is critical, the social and affordable housing needs must continue to be met but equally we need all forms of housing in Co Clare, that includes private housing, housing for elderly people, housing for single persons and housing the broadest space, in terms of funding that we may not be doing actual capital works ourselves but sometimes the activation piece is more a human resource element, engaging with people and trying to unblock things, sometimes it might be just a simple measure, if somebody wants to build five, six or ten houses, there may be a strip of land that they don’t own, maybe we own it and can help them get in there, it is problem solving and having someone their whose job is that and that the planning authority and department are there separately to do their job which is to assess planning applications, it is an unblocking. In any situation where you have urgency, it does mirror a lot of what we did during the economic crisis, we had a real strong focus on job creation, housing needs that focus now, it will need some more resources but equally it is open to the Council if it wishes to borrow money or activate some sites, you’d hope if you were doing that through a revolving fund that the money comes back, it has been successfully in other local authorities like Limerick where derelict sites have been bought, the money sold on and comes back, there is financial mechanisms where we can do this”.
