Last month, Fingal County Council launched the first phase of its new Church Fields housing development in Mulhuddart, Dublin 15, selling the first 57 homes.
The 300-unit development on State-owned lands, located about 12km northwest of the city centre, is a collaboration between the council and Gem Construction, comprising 180 affordable units, 80 cost-rental and 40 social units.
What’s noteworthy about the development is that the first units were delivered within eight months of the sod being turned on the site. In a jurisdiction characterised by overly bureaucratic public procurement rules and a backlogged planning system, that’s fast. The full 300 are on course to be delivered by the end of next year.
What’s doubly noteworthy is that the units were sold at affordable rates, ranging from €263,500 for two-bed terraced houses to €315,000 for three-bed ones albeit under the council’s affordable housing scheme whereby the local authority subsidises part of the price in return for a 20 per cent stake in the property which the owner buys back at a later date.
Is this a blueprint for housing delivery that could be replicated elsewhere?
Fingal’s county architect and the person in charge of overseeing delivery of the project, Fionnuala May, says three signature elements sped up the process and kept prices down.
Fingal is also developing a large tract of public land in Donabate, this time in conjunction with publicly listed homebuilder Glenveagh
First, the council “front-loaded” the infrastructure (roads, water, sewage) and “master-planned the entire site” before Gem laid a brick.
This included building an extension to Wellview Avenue which connects the development to Damastown Road, the main east-west route through the area; upgrading local cycleways to give children better access to schools located to the north of the site; and redeveloping local parklands, one of which had been plagued by antisocial activity.
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The council, she says, wants to anchor the new development quickly so it doesn’t feel like a new estate on the periphery of things while improving local transport links and amenities for existing communities.
Another advantageous element was the “development agreement” between Fingal and the contractor which effectively gave Gem a licence to build on the council’s land (within certain parameters) but which crucially allowed Fingal to reduce time-consuming procurement processes to do with design, engineering and utilities.
The cost per unit was also agreed in advance “so we had price certainty at a very early stage,” says May. “I’m not being a total Pollyanna about it, it was still exacting work to drive it through, but we are getting results.”
Another advantage was scale. The large site allowed “volume housebuilders” like Gem economies of scale. Gem’s construction director Kevin Fay says the company, which has access to a just-in-time supply chain, was “at peak, standing eight timber frame kits a week”.
Fingal County Council has perhaps the strongest reputation of any local authority when it comes to housing delivery.
He says Gem has agreed with Fingal to build an additional 217 units on the 9½-hectare site in Mulhuddart, meaning the company will deliver, provided there are no hiccups, 517 units in 2½ years.
Fingal has perhaps the strongest reputation of any local authority when it comes to housing delivery. Fay describes the council as “very proactive” when it comes to homebuilding.
According to the chief executive’s latest monthly report, it has 2,436 units in its housing pipeline: 405 under construction; 931 at the planning approval stage; 322 in the planning and design stage; and 768 due from Part V, the rule that requires private developers to set aside part of their projects for social housing.
Fingal is also developing a large tract of public land in Donabate, this time in conjunction with publicly listed home builder Glenveagh. The Balmoston development will eventually deliver 1,200 homes of which 60 per cent will be private, 20 per cent affordable and 20 per cent social.
At the end of last month, 44 of the 86 properties available in the first phase of construction under the council’s affordable housing scheme were sale agreed with the two-bed and three-bed units ranging in price from €299,000 to €310,000.
For all the criticism laid at their door, local authorities here have been so tied up in red tape and process when it comes to the provision of housing that purchasing turnkey properties directly from the private sector, often at a significant cost, has, from the councils’ perspective, been viewed as a more efficient use of resources and time.
Central government is so rigorous in its rules and cost-control protocols that many councils say they are effectively disincentivised to build, an irony given the lack of cost control we’ve seen with some of the bigger capital projects like the children’s hospital.
Fingal appears to have found a more efficient route through the bureaucratic “four-stage” procurement process imposed on them by the Department of Housing, a halfway house between developing directly and purchasing directly, which allows for faster timelines and more affordable end prices.
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