Tipperary councillors praise ‘gamechanger’ in tackling ‘scourge of town centre’
The Vacant Above the Shop Grant was discussed at the April meeting of the Clonmel Borough District
A number of Tipperary councillors have praised a scheme that they say could be a “gamechanger” in tackling the “scourge” of their town centre.
The recently announced Vacant Above the Shop Grant was discussed at the April meeting of the Clonmel Borough District.
Fianna Fáil councillor Siobhán Ambrose said that people have already been in contact with her with regards the grant.
Cllr Ambrose stated: “If we can get people living over the shop, it is really going to be game changing.
“There’s a lot of young people living at home with their parents. They could all be in lovely apartments or lovely town houses over the town centre.
“I think that’s going to be a real gamechanger as well, even for the shops in the town centre to have people directly living overheard.”
These sentiments were echoed by independent councillor Richie Molloy, who described dereliction as “the scourge of the town centre”.
Cllr Molloy continued: “I welcome the news that it looks like it’ll be easier now to live above shops going forward.
“As far as I know, in O’Connell’s Street there’s only the one family living there, when years and years ago you’d have several families.
“It would make the town centre much more vibrant after six o’clock which it isn’t at the moment. It’s so quiet after five o’clock.
“The place is deserted simply because there aren't enough people living in the town centre.”
In response to the two councillors, Shane Grogan, Town Regeneration Officer at Tipperary County Council, highlighted the demand for the grant.
Mr Grogan said: “We would have an expectation that with the three new grants that have come out that we would see a significant increase in the number of applications we’re getting.
“My team have already been contacted by a number of property owners here in the town, who are keen to start the process so we are meeting with them.
“We have had meetings with a number of property owners already who have contacted us and they’re very enthusiastic about this new grant.
“So we are hoping to see applications starting to come in for that in the next couple of weeks.”
He went on to highlight the actions the council is taking to tackle dereliction in Clonmel and further afield.
“We have written to everybody. What happens is you get the Section 8.2 letter, you have four weeks within which to respond and what we ask people to do is to come back with a time bound constant plan as to their actions.
“Our primary concern is to bring these buildings back into use but where we don’t get any engagement, those properties are put directly onto the Derelict Sites Register within four weeks of receiving the first letter.
“Where people engage with us, we will work with them because we know that there are various reasons why a property is vacant or derelict.”
Mr Molloy told the meeting that the council is expected to collect €1.1 million in derelict site levies over the next few weeks.
He went on to say that if people refuse to pay the levy, the council will take them to court. However, he insisted that the local authority would “prefer to work with people”.
“We are adopting a very open attitude because there is so much funding available now that there really is no excuse anymore to have a vacant or derelict building in any of our towns,” he added.
Mr Molloy concluded by saying that the council also has the option of completely Compulsory Purchase Orders (CPO) in cases where owners of derelict buildings fail to engage.