This article is from page 31 of the 2011-12-20 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 31 JPG
KILRUSH Town Council is set to ramp-up the number of inspections it undertakes on local authority housing in the town for 2012 – in an effort to reduce the amount of money currently being spent on repairing council houses.
At last Thursday’s annual budget meeting in Kilrush the local authority approved a plan to reduce the annual allocated for social housing repair from € 45,000 in 2011 to € 40,000 for 2012.
This reduction has been budgeted, in part, to take account for a number of major repairs currently being made by Kilrush Town Council to their stock of local authority houses.
The council has also decided to adopt a strategy of increasing the number of housing inspections taking place to local authority houses in an effort to reduce the amount of damage done by tenants in local authority houses.
According to Mayor of Kilrush Ian Lynch (FG), the council would hope to reap the benefits from this year’s capital expenditure in years to come.
“This year we will more proactive on making sure that houses are properly maintained. We would hope that we will see the benefit from this next year,” he said.
Kilrush town clerk John Corry confirmed that there will be an increase in the level of inspections of council houses in Kilrush in 2012 and that more staff had been delegated to the housing sections to help with this.
He also confirmed that the local authority was having a more difficult time in collecting rent from council property as a result of the recession.
In total Kilrush Town Council has allocated € 270,000 to be spent in the Housing and Buildings Section for 2012 in addition to € 40,000 to be spent on house repairs. They have also budgeted for just over € 300,000 to be raised in council rents locally in 2012.