Communities urged to work with authorities to tackle dereliction in Laois
Laois County Council has met its targets but dereliction remains an issue in the county
Communities are being urged to contact elected officials and Council to tackle derelict properties in their locality.
Laois County Council’s Town Regeneration Officer says Local Authorities are now investing more resources into bringing old properties back into use.
Denise Rainey was speaking at the official opening of the new Croí na Bhaile playground in the centre of Ballyroan. The playground and Multi Use Games Area are located on the site of the once derelict boys school.
“The regeneration section was constituted just over a year ago. We have responsibility for access. Working with community groups to access funding for regeneration projects but we also have responsibility for vacancy and dereliction. This project ticked two boxes because it was a derelict site right in the centre of our village, it was a blight on the town,” Mrs Rainey said at the official opening in Ballyroan.
She noted Tanaiste Simon Harris’s comments in relation to what he viewed as the need for Local Authorities to do more to tackle dereliction.
“Dereliction takes a lot of resources and traditionally Local Authorities put money in mainstream planning, development, control and enforcement. Dereliction was kind of the poor relative but in recent years Laois County Council and other local authorities have dedicated a lot of resources to establishing regeneration sections and one of our aims is to tackle vacancy and dereliction so we now have one full time person working solely on that. I acknowledge the Tanaiste’s comments but I think Local Authorities are responding well by dedicating the required resources to it,” said Mrs Rainey.
She was particularly pleased with Laois County Council’s performance. “We are given targets every year in terms of entering properties into our vacancy activation programme. We have met our targets every year and we are hoping to exceed our targets this year,” she said.
Mrs Rainey spoke of the importance of communities and their local elected representatives in the process.
“Ballyroan had the foresight to go and develop a community plan and one of the projects they identified in that community plan in consultation with the local community, was the need for a playground facility and this site came up as a prime target for it,” she said.
“They had a lot of our job done for us. They had identified a site and they had their plan done so we worked with them then to try and leverage funding for them. It is something we are trying to do around the county, as you saw we opened the Market House in Portarlington recently. The aim is to use existing buildings and try and regenerate those,” Mrs Rainey remarked.
She had some advice for groups and communities who have identified properties or sites they believe could be brought back into use.
“Get in touch and get in touch with your elected members. The assistance of the elected members is invaluable but the local communities themselves have a big part to play. We are there to support but the local community have the skill sets that can complement us,” she said.
“All communities have something to give so I would say to any community groups who are looking at their towns and villages and want to do something, get in touch with our regeneration office and their elected members and we would only be too happy to help them,” Mrs Rainey concluded.