A new initiative has been set up by the Department of the Environment to document the condition of all housing estates across the country. This inventory was due to include details on the overall number of housing developments, completed and occupied developments, units ready for sale, units near completion, units at specific earlier stages of construction, and units not started at all. A pilot survey has just been completed in County Laois and Minister of States for Planning Ciaran Cuff is expecting national results on a county by county basis in September.
The results from the Laois pilot survey suggested that in addition to the financial consequences of high level of excess housing vacancy there were also visual, environmental and pressing health implications (IT 09/08/10).
The Laois pilot survey found:
- Serious public health and safety issues at one-quarter of the surveyed sites such as open sewers and manholes, water contamination and unsecured building sites
- One-third of recently completed housing developments are currently vacant
- A fifth of completed units are without adequate water, sewage or road access
- Alarmingly the survey also found that an additional 40% of planning permissions granted in Laois has not even got to the construction phase as yet (Independent.ie 09/08/10)
Another worrying aspect of the planning process has also been revealed through the survey. It now seems that developer’s insurance bonds, if paid to the Local Authority at all, were in no way adequate or sufficient and in lots of cases will not meet the needs of the clean-up operation. According to a senior Government official, developer’s and speculators were able to ignore preconditions and press ahead with their plans.
“Even in some cases where there were conditions to pay bonds; a lot of them just went ahead and started developing without discharging any of the pre-commencement conditions”
There is no doubt that the findings from the complete national survey will provide some startling figures. We need this and it will hopefully provide a strong evidence based platform from where a recovery strategy can be planned.
Justin Gleeson
Ireland after NAMA 
August 9, 2010 at 2:28 pm
And nobody listened to An Taisce?
August 9, 2010 at 2:37 pm
Nobody in their right mind listens to an taisce, they would object to their own shadows. An utterly arrogant and unaccountable body and not even a quango.
August 9, 2010 at 7:13 pm
Typical of the sort of response one would expect from lawless Kerry. Where sucking up to renegade councillors passes for planning progress.
Just take another look at the subject of the story Kerrytom, and remember, you are paying for this mess.
August 10, 2010 at 2:57 am
Personal, not corporate, liability!
Accountability.
August 10, 2010 at 5:13 am
Justin,
To what extent do you consider the present count being undertaken by DoEHLG to adequately assess
(a) no. ghost estates,
(b) no. vacant dwellings
(c) no. partly-built dwellings
(d) health and safety issues
(e) finance available to complete estates, particularly from developers/bonds
Your colleague Rob Kitchin has stated that the count is limited in scope
“It only has reference to post-April 2007 housing estates where there is vacancy above 10%. It therefore a) excludes estates where vacancy is below 10%, b) excludes unoccupied/ unfinished one-off housing, c) it assumes that estates started prior to April 2007 are both finished and have occupancy levels above 90%. There are lots of houses in pre-2007 estates that are empty; the same with one-offs.”
August 10, 2010 at 8:33 am
The other day a colleague reminded me that we’ve been working in Planning for thirty-five years. This is a long time in which to be looking at numbers and statistics. Inevitably having looked at statistics for such a long time you develop a ‘feeling’ for the numbers. An older colleague (now deceased) could glance at a table and say at once; ‘that’s wrong. I don’t know what is wrong, but it is wrong!’. Lately I have the same feeling about some of the data on which these papers on ‘Ghost Estates’ are based.
The data, tables, graphs and photographs of the ghosts look impressive, but something is not quite right.
Take Planning Permissions for instance. If you compare the numbers of houses permitted with the number reported as having been built, there is a serious discrepancy. The number reported as built vastly exceeds the number permitted. Depending on whether you ‘lag’ the permissions or not the accumulated discrepancy in 2007 is between 50,000 and 100,000. That is at least a year’s worth of production in any man’s measure. Frankly, it is plainly impossible.
‘Built without permission!’ you say.
Sorry! the scale is incredible. A few hundred perhaps, but not tens of thousands.
But then we don’t actually count the number of houses built – we count connections to the electrical grid. Yes, every house must have electricity and we believe the convenient fiction that the count of connections matches the count of houses. Well, we have no other choice, do we. However, according to ESBN and the Regulator, there are also disconnections from the grid. From 2002 to 2005 these trundled along at about 8,500 per annum.
‘Obsolesence’ you say; ‘We’ve allowed for that’.
But then in 2005 disconnections shot up to 22,000. This was the year in which 93,000 new house connections were reported as having been made. The year after, they fell back to a mere 1,500 per annum and it took until 2009 before the numbers of disconnections again approached 7,000 per annum. So from 2002 to 2009 there were nearly 68,000 disconnections.
To be honest, I’m not too worried about the number of disconnections, it’s the footnotes that really bother me. You see, the footnote for the Regulator’s 2005 report explains that disconnections follow de-registration and de-energisation and that disconnection happens automatically two years after.
The 2009 footnote says however that the nearly 7,000 disconnections which happened in that year;
‘includes MPRNs associated with housing scheme quotations that have not progressed’.
To the uninitiated, an MPRN is a meter number. What the Regulator is saying is that meter numbers are allocated, not when houses are connected, but when a quotation is given to connect them. If the quotation is never acted upon, then the withdrawal of the meter number is accounted for as a disconnection.
The unfortunate implication here is that the allocation of a meter number implies a connection made.
Have we, however inadvertently, been been counting the allocation of meter numbers by way of mere ‘quotation’ as connections?
If we have, then perhaps it would go some way to explain the discrepancy between planning permissions and constructions.
Planning permissions are reported by the CSO and are subject to strict accounting rules. ESB connections are reported privately to the DEHLG and are not subject to any similarly transparent accounting rules.
Perhaps we should seek a fuller explanation of the accounting rules used by ESB when reporting ‘house connections’ to the DEHLG before we interpret them as ‘houses built’ and then go on to calculate hypothetical vacancies and then further postulate an entire future housing policy on a mistaken statistic?
August 10, 2010 at 9:59 am
Hi Richard,
It has been clearly stated that there are issues with ‘official’ housing statistics in Ireland – house prices, house completions, zoning data etc. This is part of the problem and something that needs to be addressed.
Local Authorities know how many planning permissions are granted per annum. You say that these figures are accurate and the issue is with the completions which are based on ESB connections/quotations/allocations. Why is the DEHLG dependant on using ESB connections? Is it that there is nothing else available?
How come there is such an issue with each Local Authority generating an accurate count of the number of housing completions per annum in its own area? Is it such a huge task to expect an authority to know when granted applications have been completed and are compliant with all the planning conditions they outlined? You could even go a step further to determine if these new completed housing units have become occupied.
Surely in this day and age we can make a better effort than this. We have the ability to digitally map every residential address point and proposed residential address point in an area – it’s entirely possible to have each point linked to an original planning permission and updated with completion date and compliance with planning conditions and then possibly include an indication of occupancy/vacancy. There is an opportunity to be able to keep our finger on the pulse here. Perhaps this is being done, if it is then why is the DEHLG still using ESB data?
I would have thought that this should be a key part of the entire planning process and an essential monitoring system at the local level.
August 10, 2010 at 1:57 pm
“Why is the DEHLG dependant on using ESB connections? Is it that there is nothing else available? ”
Yes. No commencement certs, completion certs, nothing. Once permission is given a council will normally desktop progress from aerial maps
August 10, 2010 at 8:40 am
Derrick, I fail to see why this arrogant and unaccountable green cabaal in an taisce is allowed to indulge itself with its willy nilly ranting and serial objecting for nothing.
Unfortunately Derrick I also pay for the Blue Flag scheme where An Taisce don’t even carry out the full suite of tests the taxpayer pays them to carry out , and the greens do not audit this non compliance with the contract terms.
The blue flag scheme should be taken off an taisce forthwith. I would also charge this charity €20 to make a planning objection …just like EVERYBODY else has to pay.
As I said elsewhere the Cuffe exercise is pointless when these farcical population projections below have been embedded into a whole new series of regional planning guidelines adopted in recent months.
Click to access File,165,en.pdf
First we must come up with realistic population projections.
From there we can work out what housing is needed overall.
Then we must ensure that the building regulations in urbanisations are enforced.
A good part of the reason for so many one offs is the criminally low build standards and lack of building regulation enforcement in urban areas where jerry built semis and apartments abound.
At least if you build it yourself it won’t fall down as much of the recent housing stock inevitably will….and rather soon too.
August 10, 2010 at 2:09 pm
Hi Namawinelake,
There are going to be some holes in this count but overall it should give a good picture of the current state of play. The primary focus of inspectors is on newer developments – post 2007 as far as I can tell (3 years or less). Developments are classed as having two or more dwellings and the inspection will be determined on levels of overall completion and occupancy.
In relation to the ‘completion’ side of things it will not be included in the survey if the following aspects are deemed to be sufficiently completed – dwellings, roads and footpaths, lighting, water supply, waste water infrastructure and open space.
In relation to the ‘occupancy’ side of things it will not be included in the survey if the number of unoccupied units is less than 10%.
The inspectors are being initially asked to provide details on the name of developments, address detail (to be converted to x,y for input to GIS) and planning file number and date of planning approval.
A series of questions are then asked on the state of the development:
• ‘Housing Development Type’ – number of single dwellings, semi-d, duplex, apartment etc
• ‘Dwelling Completion Status’ – this should provide a useful count of the level of occupancy in estates and also the status of near complete and un-completed units. Details are to be provided on the stage of construction – roofed and habitable, not yet weather-tight, DPC stage, foundation level. Details will also be provided on the level of construction activity currently taking place.
• ‘Road, Access and Lighting Status’ – this will provide details on the number of dwellings that are sufficiently served
• ‘Water Services’ – details on full water supply, waste water sewer and storm water infrastructure
• ‘Open Space’ – details on how the open space matches up with that planned in the overall masterplan
• Additional details are to be provided on potentially dangerous areas of developments (open trenches, open access to construction works etc), and any obvious health and safety concerns
Now, to get back to your questions:
Number of ghost estates – it should give us a reasonable count although as far as I’m aware it will not include estates that were build more than 3 years ago. This may then exclude anything from pre 2007. In previous posts we estimated there were approx 620 Ghost Estates with completion dates post 2005. Only 13% of these were completed in 2006 with the rest coming online afterwards. The DEHLG survey could miss out a few here if this is the case however I would suspect that it will be much less than this as they will be provided with assistance and direction from LAs.
Number Vacant Dwellings – the survey should give us a good estimate of levels of vacancy within the surveyed developments. Remember that this will not include one-off housing or estates with less than 10% un-occupancy so we won’t get a complete figure. Census 2011 will answer that.
Number of partly-built dwellings – the survey should provide good detail on this. I’m not sure if it will record details on the material used in construction and the effect exposure to weather conditions will have on these. If a timber-framed house has been exposed to ice, rain and frost for the last two years does it have any chance of survival? I’m not a construction expert but I’d say the chances are pretty slim. I’m sure there are also issues for exposed concrete and steel.
Health and Safety issues – this will be recorded.
Finance available to complete estates, particularly from developers/bonds – Not sure if this is coming from the survey
Overall I think this should provide good detail and will have a clear idea of the scale and scope of the problems on a county by county basis. At least it will provide pointers to the areas in most need of attention.
The real issue I have with this is the fact that we don’t seem to have a monitoring system that has all of this already recorded. To me it seems only logical that a LA would know everything about its own housing infrastructure from planning applications to commencements and finally to completions – accurately, timely and at an individual house level. No wonder the place is a mess. How can we steer a clear path if we don’t know what’s out there?
We have the data and technology to do this and someone desperately needs to take the lead. The fact that we have to send housing inspectors out in every LA to retrospectively record details on the state of housing developments built sometime over the last 3 years is an embarrassment and a failure of the whole system. This evidence should and needs be at the tip of our fingers. The DEHLG need to take the lead on this: develop a sophisticated, accurate and timely monitoring tool for planning (housing, retail etc) that tracks the development of our country and allows us to put the brakes on when and where they are required. We need to learn from this lesson and make some changes.
Justin
August 10, 2010 at 4:22 pm
Ah! the innocence of youth! My graduation thesis for planning was ‘Information Systems for Planning’. You see I too once believed that technology would eventually bring rigor and precision to the quantification of planning policies.
Thirty-five years later the situation is – anything but!
I have raised the question of ESB connections for a very simple reason. Despite the fact that IrelandAfterNama uses this data on which to base its learned deliberations, you, as its spokesperson, do not seem to understand the limitations of the data on which your papers are based.
Oh! we have computer mapping and small area statistics; we have satellite photos and Geodirectory; we have a whole panoply of quantitative methods and techniques; we have learned Institutes to do the analysis and the Internet to communicate the results.
But the Law’s an ass. And the manner in which the Planning Law is framed requires that local authorities behave in an extraordinary and counter-intuitive manner when they are zoning land.
Consider if you will the simple metric of the area of land zoned for housing. You would think that in any given county it would be simple to count the number of hectares of land zoned on which houses can be built.
In a recent posting , one of your papers (A Haunted Landscape) used the figure for residential land derived from the DEHLG quarterly returns. Nationally 14,200 Ha are zoned.
Consider the figure given for land zoned in one region which shall remain nameless. Your own paper quotes this figure as 1,200 Ha. However the Regional Planning Guidelines for the same region give the figure as 2,500 Ha.
But both of these figures relate to land zoned explicitly for residential use. In that same Region, there is, in one of the constituent counties, another category of zoning (other than that explicitly named Residential). This category also permits the building of housing in settlements. Since it is not ‘Residential’ there is no obligation to report it. And in that one county another nearly 4,500 Ha of land is so zoned. So on top of 1,000 Ha of residential land there is another 4,500 Ha of other land on which houses can be permitted.
In one county 5,500 Ha compared with a national total reported by the DEHLG of 14,200 Ha, and there are 33 other counties …
The reason for this discrepancy is simple as I illustrated in my previous humorous comment about the ‘Idi Amin School of Planning’. In trying to enforce a social mix, government mandated a policy of forfeit of up to 20% of land or houses in residentially zoned areas. Developers promptly moved to areas that were not zoned – tiny villages at crossroads and the like. Plans were obliged to follow suit and to zone land there in order to try to make sure that the 20% rule applied to all building land. The result is farcical and what is the reaction of government? A minister is promising to investigate the farce created by his own legislation.
By all means let’s pick the mouse-droppings out of the pepper, but let us also recognise that government has hitherto ignored a central tenet of planning – that it is primarily a search for unintended consequences – and these ill-considered consequences are now upon us.
August 10, 2010 at 7:34 pm
Richard,
I understand that there are limitations to the ESB data but this is the only official source of housing completion data available. What I fail to understand is why the DEHLG cannot be provided with housing completion data from LAs on an annual basis.
Please forgive the ‘innocence of youth’ but I thought an LA would surely be able to keep track on the housing developments that it granted permissions for, at least until developments were fully completed anyway. It seems from your comment I’ve been foolish to think so.
Perhaps you could outline what the main issues are that prevent an LA from doing this and then providing DEHLG with accurate figures on such? Why is it that they have to depend on ESB data as the official source of housing completions? I’m sure you have suggestions for developing a more accurate method of capturing completions figures within LAs?
Perhaps your LA has a more accurate method in place already?
I’m only suggesting that there must be better ways of keeping track of the entire process and the DEHLG need to get this rolling. Surely you are in agreement here?
As for the planning legislation issues – your comments on zoning have further highlighted the need for change. I’m in no way experienced enough to comment on this.
Justin
August 11, 2010 at 10:02 am
The question is not ‘who’ counts the houses? If you want an accurate annual house-count, then tax houses. Before Rates were abolished, I always had an accurate annual count by DED. I do not say that the ESB data is useless or that Geodirectory data is useless but it is necessary that undeclared assumptions be clarified.
So, rather the questions should be; on what theory do we base policy? and what assumptions underlie that theory and crucially, on what data does the theory rely for validation? Assumptions underlying theory are often quite clearly stated, but when we use proxy measures in place of real data (ESB connections in place of house-counts) then there are assumptions hidden in the data too. Therefore it is necessary to clarify these hidden assumptions before embarking on potentially disastrous policy expeditions.
The objective of public spatial policy is to achieve ‘equilibrium’ in supply of and demand for housing. In 1999 public housing policy was driven by perceived need to increase production of houses in order to reduce prices. Local authorities were chided for restrictive zoning policies and there was an investigation into land hoarding. Today, there is a perception of overproduction and there are investigations of over-zoning and ‘Ghost’ estates. I realize that in politics, perception ‘is’ reality; but too much of our planning policy is based on theory that is at best, weakly supported by the available data. Sometimes this is the fault of the data but often the theory is likewise inadequate.
If Geodirectory 2009 is to be believed, (even allowing for undercounting of vacancy), it contains a vacancy rate of only about four percent, but the question is; should we believe it? If we do believe, then the hypothesized scale of overproduction is a myth and policies of restriction will be counterproductive.
Recently (since the introduction of the NSS) Planning tries to use spatial policies to rebalance disturbed equilibrium, and to achieve a balance between urban and rural needs. However, the birth of NAMA has demonstrated that we are not immune from what Nassim Taleb has called ‘Black Swan’ events – catastrophic, unexpected collapses. One of the characteristics of such an event is that
‘in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable.’
So when I see papers demonstrating retrospectively that prior to NAMA, everything was perfectly clear and predictable if only we had interpreted the signs correctly, I also remember Taleb’s advice on what to do with the authors of such papers;
‘If you hear a “prominent” economist using the word equilibrium, or normal distribution, do not argue with him; just ignore him, or try to put a rat down his shirt.’
You may probably guess that I am casting about, looking for a rat!
August 11, 2010 at 5:49 am
Justin
Many thanks for taking the time to reply – I guess we’ll see next month what information comes out. But from my own practical experience of rural towns there are estates begun in 2002-onwards that are still, 8 years later, partly (though mostly) complete and partly unoccupied. I expect when the information is released, there will be immediate questions as to why particular estates have been omitted and why the count didn’t go further and comprehensively detail empty housing and in particular comprehensively examine all estates – I can understand it may take some small aamount of time to examine the planning records and visit a site, but at the site it should be a relatively straightforward matter of determining empty and partly completed housing. Health and safety issues might take longer but surely 4 months should have been sufficient to examine all estates?
By the way, I would love to know what testing is taking place to examine health hazards. Would the contaminated water conclusions for example be based on water testing at *every* site or would it require a complaint from a resident to positively test for problems. Perhaps the results of the count next month will provide answers.