CORK City Council has said it is confident it will deliver an “increased reduction” in the turnaround time for reletting vacant social housing units throughout 2023.

A new strategy, in place to address lengthy delays, aims to more than halve the turnaround time from 75 weeks to 32 by the end of this year.

It comes as the National Oversight and Audit Commission’s Local Authority Performance Indicator Report for 2021 published at the end of last year stated that, on average, vacant council homes in the city were lying idle for around 75 weeks.

The commission, which is the national independent oversight body for the local government sector in Ireland, compared the 2021 average reletting times for the six main urban authorities of Cork, Dublin, and Galway cities, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, Fingal, and South Dublin County Councils and found that the longest average reletting time across these six authorities was recorded by Cork city.

At the most recent housing strategic policy committee meeting, however, Cork city councillors were informed that the council is making headway in reducing turnaround times.

In 2022, the council’s housing directorate set up a new structure and programme to address long-term vacancy and turnaround times.

Minutes from the housing SPC stated that a “number of new innovations” have been introduced in all areas of the process, from area management to housing maintenance to allocations.

“Although times have improved, it is acknowledged that it is still a long period.

“Based on process and system improvements under way, the city council is confident it will deliver an increased reduction in the turnaround time throughout 2023, with a very ambitious target to reduce the turnaround period for any new property becoming vacant to 32 weeks by the end of 2023,” the minutes stated.

Reletting time includes the time taken to both repair and upgrade vacated properties to an acceptable letting standard and to relet those properties in line with the council’s scheme of lettings.

The new programme to tackle turnaround times consists of two delivery streams.

“The first will deal with existing vacant units to December 2022, categorising them by locality and assessing them for repair by contract. There are currently four out of ten batches with contractors for repair,” councillors were informed.

“The second stream sees all newly vacant units being assessed for repair by a dedicated depot team, upon becoming vacant.

“The dedicated team will be continuously monitored to ensure quick turnaround times and where necessary will be supplemented by separate contractors when demand is high.”

Cork City Council said it is expected that “significant improvements” in turnaround times will be achieved in newly vacant units and that the existing backlog will be cleared by early 2024, funding permitting.

The local authority anticipates that it will return 400 vacant properties from repair, ready for allocation in 2023.

The information was provided following a motion tabled by Sinn Féin councillor Kenneth Collins, who sought information on vacant homes and ways to expedite reletting units.