Government targets push councils to inspect private rental properties, but not to force landlords to fix them up

Last year, South Dublin County Council wrote more than 2,000 letters to landlords to say that the homes they were renting out didn’t meet the minimum standards.

But the council didn’t launch any enforcement proceedings against any landlord in 2023, show recently released figures.

This is because they weren’t doing any follow-up inspections to check if the home had been brought up to standard, said a spokesperson for South Dublin County Council last week.

“Up to recently the Environmental Health Officers were concentrating on first inspections,” says the spokesperson. “Follow-up inspections have begun and notices will issue where required.”

Gavin Elliott, a solicitor with Community Law and Mediation, says that doesn’t make much sense to him. “That makes it sound like the legislation has only been in place for a year,” he says.

But legislation stipulating minimum standards for private rented accommodation was introduced in 1992, he says. “It’s not a new scheme.”

If the council isn’t doing any follow-up inspections then it doesn’t know how many homes it has brought into compliance, says Elliott, so the entire inspection process could be achieving nothing and the council wouldn’t know.

“They could have 100 percent compliance or zero percent,” he says.

South Dublin County Council’s approach does align, though, with how targets have been set and success measured by the Department of Housing.

The government’s housing strategy, Housing for All, sets a target for each local authority to inspect a quarter of its private rental stock each year, but doesn’t mention follow-up inspections or ensuring that homes comply with standards.

A spokesperson for the Department of Housing says it is up to councils how they operate.

“If a property has been found to be non-compliant with the Regulations, it is a matter for the local authority to determine what action is necessary and appropriate,” they said.

Pursuing the cases

Data published by the Department of Housing suggests stark differences in how each of the four Dublin councils go about enforcing basic standards in the private-rental sector, with the city much more aggressive in its follow-up.

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There’s a difference in how they go about staffing the work, too, although its not clear what impact that has on enforcement if any.

Dublin City Council – which at more than 900, launched by far the most enforcement actions last year – uses internal council staff to inspect private rental homes and to follow up on breaches. It has 28 environmental health officers, said a spokesperson last month.

Fingal County Council, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, and South Dublin County Council – which between them launched 20 enforcement actions last year – contract private companies to do inspections and rely on internal staff members to do enforcement, when those staff consider it necessary.

Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council recently contracted a company to do inspections at an estimated cost of €4 million, according to tender documents. The engineering company ORS won the contract, said a council spokesperson.

Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council didn’t respond to a query as to how many full time internal staff they have working on private-rental standards.

In April, Fingal County Council issued a contract with an estimated value of €6 million to a company, Arthurstown Construction Ltd, to carry out private-rental inspections.

A spokesperson for Fingal County Council says the council contracted a private company “due to the specialist and expert knowledge required to carry out private rented inspections, which ensures sufficient expertise is available to enable inspections to be conducted effectively and pursuant to the current regulations”.

In January, a council official told Green Party Councillor David Healy that vacancies in the environmental health unit were behind delays in issuing some enforcement proceedings. They planned to fill vacancies in the following months, said the response.

The council spokesperson didn’t clarify this week how many internal staff it now has working on private rental inspections and enforcement of standards. “The number of dedicated full-time staff varies from time to time depending on current demands and requirements,” she said.

Fingal County Council brings enforcement action when the conditions are unacceptable and there are significant contraventions of the legislation, says the spokesperson, or when “action needs to be taken in order to remedy conditions that are serious or deteriorating”.

It will also take enforcement action if there is a history of non- compliance with improvement letters and other measures, she said.

“We continue to work closely with landlords to resolve the situation when a property is non-compliant,” says the spokesperson for Fingal County Council. “In the majority of non-compliant properties, if the non-compliance is deemed minor, enforcement action is not appropriate.”

The spokesperson for South Dublin County Council says it contracted a private company to provide three inspectors who work alongside its own five environmental health staff.

“Environmental Health Officers request improvement notices when they, in their professional opinion, believe them to be warranted,” says the spokesperson.

But until recently the environmental health officers were concentrating on first inspections and have only recently begun doing follow-up inspections, says the spokesperson.

Is the target the problem?

The government’s housing strategy, Housing for All, sets a simple target that councils should aim to inspect 25 percent of all private-rented tenancies in their areas each year.

The Department of Housing spokesperson didn’t directly respond to a question as to whether setting a target for the number of inspections – rather than, say, the number of homes brought into compliance – may have distorted priorities in some councils.

Instead, they pointed to the 25 percent figure. And, they said, “The number of inspections conducted has more than tripled in recent years, from an average of around 20,000 a year in the period 2005 to 2017, to over 63,500 inspections last year.”

Elliott says that if there is no follow-up landlords will find out. Some big landlords may have received a letter in the past and know from experience that there will be no follow up, he said.

Elliott says he wonders if the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB) should be put in charge of private-rental inspections or if a separate agency needs to be established. “If you were starting from scratch you wouldn’t give it to the local authorities,” he says.

Dealing with private rental homes isn’t part of the council’s core role. The only role the council has with private rentals is these inspections, he says, and it doesn’t marry well with the other rental regulations enforced by the RTB.

Said Elliott: “It’s not a coherent system and it doesn’t link with the RTB structure.”