Redevelopment Scheme For Run Down Properties In Urban Centres Extended

0:00The last word with life pharmacy over 100 local pharmacies nationwide that are always here to help life pharmacy live better together a scheme to encourage the redevelopment of rundown properties for homes and businesses in urban centers has now been extended to five new towns is the Living City initiative which is already in place in Dublin cork Limerick-Gorwick Waterford and Kilkenny will now apply from today to add loan, draw it, Dundalk, Letterkenny and Slygotown. The scheme will offer tax relief for the refurbishment and conversion of buildings from residential or commercial use including partial conversions for over the shop living as well. To discuss the story we've got John McGahnis chief executive of Dundalk Chamber of Commerce and Studio with me and Jude Cherry is also here who is founder and director of Anish your both very welcome to the program just to explain to the listeners about the Living City initiative it's a tax incentive scheme essentially which is looking at tackling vacancy and dereliction in urban centers that's both residential and commercial it increases housing supply at least that is the hope through refurbishment and

1:01reuse of existing buildings. Jude if I can ask you first and this scheme has been in place as I mentioned for some of those cities for a while now at this stage is it something that's been working well so far and thanks for having me on great chat today will yeah it's good to see this extending out to the other towns and the likes of draw it and stuff which should be really cities as well and I'd like to see it extend out to even further all kind of 10 10 centers in Ireland and it is it is a good scheme unfortunately the uptake has been very low over the last it's nearly 10 years or just over 10 years in place and I think by 2023 alone there was around 500 applications in the country and but with the likes of the faking homes grant that's actually has over 17,000 applications or at the moment so you can see there's quite a difference between the appeal of getting a grant of you know a lump sum of money even after you do the work after you have to pay all the money out you get a lump sum of money routed in a tax break over a 10-year

2:04period it clearly seems to be more appealing to people it's it is a good scheme and it can need to what's good about it it's it's wider it's looking at commercial property uses as well routed in just homes and I think that's something that in our 10 centers we're losing a lot of the retail we'd love to see a lot of retail old retail being converted into like community or creative uses as well and I'm not too sure that this tax relief would apply to those uses routed in retail and services and but that's something yeah overall it is it is something I would like to see more uptake of it anyway um John if we can take the dock as a case study is I presume there are still quite a few properties that are around but just for you come on you were saying that actually some previous practices meant that maybe derelict properties in done dock town and the urban center or maybe not as high as some of the other towns here currently yeah to dock to dock isn't quite a unique position that we've done very well in the last 10 years so in 2015 for example dereliction within the wider 10 center was at 72% as of today that's

3:09now 15% if you take commercial street our largest town it was at 52% that's down to 5% that's for two reasons first of all is the great work done by Mark McElliot and our local bids development company the second reason is the local council been actually very good at getting good large-scale urban urban regeneration projects um sent into the government approved by the government and all of that money to go back into our town center which makes it a very attractive place to go the one thing that I would say about the Living City initiative is well it's extremely exciting for to dock and exciting for to dock chamber because at every stage since 2015 we have put our lobbying and our advocacy efforts at the very forefront to have to dock put into this scheme and I'd really like to just take the opportunity to really acknowledge Paddy Malone who's a board member a former president and Paddy at every stage alongside the chamber has put in pre-punch of submissions has written policy papers has advocated with government ministers over the last decade and it just shows you especially for people within the chamber movement and our members how well chambers can actually do in terms of advocating at a local level through policy initiatives and getting it actually enacted at a government level very briefly to the main reasons why I think

4:11the Living City initiative is good one is for the economy one is for the supplier housing so when you take the economy take a town center you're going to actually be able to renovate and rejuvenate space above the shopfront that's really good because you're going to get people back living up above it that's really good for the streets because you're going to go buy your coffee you're going to buy your newspaper you're going to have your lunch across the road it's good for construction in the short term because you're going to create construction jobs and it's good for the retail and the shops in the long term because you're increasing footfall in terms of housing not just about up above the shopfront if you take the dock today the map that was announced it probably the map extends for about two kilometers ish north south east and west out of the town center that takes in about a thousand a couple of thousand houses one of the big differences with this scheme is until the last previous 10 years you could only apply for it if the house was built after 1975 it's now 1915 that has taken thousands more houses into it so again if I'm a whole no more in to dock if I live in that area if I have a vacant house a derelict property I don't know what to do about it not only can I apply for the 70,000 euro government grant not only can I apply for the 10,000 euro SEI grants I can now apply for the live in city initiative and as I

5:16mentioned earlier to doxone very well in the last 10 years but by being added into the live in city initiative because the lobbying efforts there put forward by to dock chamber we have another vehicle that we can ensure the great work that we've done for the last decade can continue for the decade too that is quite an extension as well going from 1975 back to 1915 automatically and a lot of these towns that's going to bring a lot of properties particularly for residential use and are going to come into play they wouldn't have previously been there yeah I think it will help because unfortunately we don't actually know for a lot of our buildings when when they were built as well that can often be hard for people to tell and because we don't have when it comes to many areas with our built environment we don't have accurate data on the you know the heritage level of them and when it comes to buildings built in the 70s often they can be less energy efficient actually than some of the heritage buildings especially ones just built with block and they can be any easier to renovate from the point of view of you don't need to go down the line or breathable material so it can be more conventional renovations on them but it is it is it is welcome

6:20to see that extension into that into those dates so it will as John said it will widen out the people that can apply so as John mentioned as well they can get the faken homes and derelict grant they can get the SEA I grant and they're the living cities in those new new areas don't draw the dondark alone that are Kenny and Slygo but a big challenge for people buying hope that's that's great for people who you know who already have the those properties who maybe haven't done anything with them for a long time they they will get a lot of financial benefit from this but those who are looking to buy properties and still might be facing very high prices especially for derelict or faken properties and and that's why we'd like to see more measures come in maybe to try and push the supply of these properties onto the market and for owners who don't want to go down the renovation route themselves to try and help them and push put some pressure on them to sell so things like compulsory sales orders for instance that work very well in other countries we'd like to see the faken homes tax extended out to second homes like you have in the UK and in Wales

7:25and we'd like to see the dereliction tax that the revenue will be starting to collect the dereliction levy it's going to be transferred into dereliction tax but we'd like to see that implemented straight away rather than waiting another few years for that because on the face with you it would make perfect sense for somebody who's willing to take a property that's fallen into disrepair for them to get the incentive as opposed to the person who is maybe holding the property right now and then thinks about taking this grant just as a way of improving value before selling it on. Yeah well I think anything that that brings fake and derelict properties back into use is welcome so if owners are who have don't have you know own these properties for a long time if they're actually willing to do it now and use these measures that are in place now I would advise them to do that now before the government starts looking at more use it or lose it and methods and like we have to start thinking we have a fuel crisis coming down the line as well the most sustainable building is the existing building it's there's research out there that shows it uses about six

8:28percent less materials to renovate an existing home and that depends you know to what scale of renovation what scale the house is in but you can save a lot more money it's a lot more sustainable than going onto a greenfield and building new homes as well so we have a lot of homes that are not being used and that are line empty in heritage core town centers and getting people back into these city city and town centers as John pointed out it will be a booth for a local economy people as John pointed out we'll be able to go to local coffee shop they can reduce their car usage as well so that will save people you know living expenses as we face a cost of living crisis as well that are there are multiple benefits like when it comes to this John the uptake potentially to be hadn't on dog here because I didn't go to agree with you once the scheme has become much wider now and at second in towns the previously weren't in there as well maybe we see more than the 100 applications we had a year basically 2015 to 2025 what do you think the uptake rate is going to

9:30be like in the dog yeah I think it's going to be quite good I think it's going to be good because we have a very competent local authority particularly with our chief executive David Conway and his deputy chief executive Thomas Michael voy gave it a hard pre-experience with the scheme when he was based in Limerick so we have quite an advantage from that perspective but what I would say I would say two things really I look it up myself I'm 35 part of that whole generation it's in the middle of buying a house you know whatever with my wife and I see so many more my friends are opting at buying that second-hand home at a lower level putting money in through through all of these schemes and the living city is another example the one big thing which is just mentioned there is that you have the derelict kind of site tax coming in for vacant properties that was put forward to the last budget that's going to be handed over to revenue the government are going to legislate for that in the next few months that's going to be 7% of the value of the house so I think that's going to be a really good stick approach to get people who are just sitting on houses sitting on homes to say actually I need to do something about this or I need to sell it on because equally if you're going to apply for the vacant property the vacant property grant you can now two years ago you couldn't do this you can now apply for it if you're going to rent it

10:32out at the same time so it's a whole I suppose not just government but a whole government and societal approach to how can we best cash vacant houses vacant premises derelict properties back on stream for people to live on and there's no magic bullet it's actually a series of five or six efforts and the live and city initiative is just one of those efforts so look I'm very excited about it I'm excited for the dog it's something we've worked incredibly hard to actually get on the scheme for it's a pity it's taken 10 years but it just shows that continued lobbying continued persistence going through the proper channels of policy submissions pre-budget submissions works and I think it's very good win for the dog chamber that we're able to succeed with this. I jump again from the dog chamber of commerce and also Jude Sherry the founder and director of Enish May thanks for joining us on the last word on this Friday the last word with life pharmacy over 100 local pharmacies nationwide that are always here to help life pharmacy live better together