Housing Minister Darragh O'Brien TD presented a Design Manual for Quality Housing, and a Review of Pre-Construction Processes for Social Housing Construction and Mixed Tenure Projects to representatives from Fingal County Council.
The Design Manual is being sent to all Local Authorities and Tier-3 Approved Housing Bodies and will also be available electronically on the Department's website. The manual, a commitment in the Government's Housing for All plan, will help to:
• improve the quality of social housing
• improve delivery of social housing developments
• guide local authorities and Approved Housing Bodies, and their consultants, on the design of social housing site layouts and the internal layouts of individual social homes.
The Review of Pre-Construction Processes for Social Housing Construction and Mixed Tenure Projects was also a key commitment in Housing for All. In the Plan the Government has committed to delivering over 90,000 new build social homes by the end of 2030. The review of Pre-Construction Processes for Social Housing will help to deliver on this seismic shift towards new build social homes. The review sets out a number of practical actions which will streamline the approvals and other pre-contract processes, while ensuring that cost effectiveness is being achieved for the taxpayer.
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Commenting on the new publications Minister O'Brien said: "I am pleased to launch these important publications, both of which will greatly assist local authorities, Approved Housing Bodies, their respective design teams and planners to deliver better designed, more cost-effective and efficiently built social and mixed-tenure developments.
"The key to our current housing challenges is supply and the speed at which we can scale up supply. Both publications are key elements of Housing for All's aim of improving the quality and delivery times of social housing developments. They will help make public housing more efficient and cost-effectively designed, and will help shorten the social housing and mixed tenure approvals processes. This is critical given the scale of public housing ambition.
"The Design Manual also sits firmly within the Programme for Government commitment to act against climate change. We must continue to improve not only the quantity of housing output across all the various forms of tenure but also to maintain and improve on the quality of residential development, in an economic and environmentally sustainable manner. I want to thank the local authorities, Approved Housing Bodies, Land Development Agency and all who inputted into the Design Manual for Quality Housing and the working group on pre-construction processes for their comprehensive report."
Frank Curran, Chairman of the County and City Management Association Housing, Building and Land Use, Committee added: "Local Authorities have a major role to play in delivering the social housing targets set out in the Housing for All plan and I welcome the publication of the Design Manual for Quality Housing which will be of great assistance to housing departments across the 31 local authorities as they seek to increase their own-build output of sustainable social housing to meet the needs of our communities."
