Kilkenny ahead of curve, but not on building inspections and third bin

Kilkenny County Council is ahead of the national average in delivering on the majority of service areas, but one or two obvious gaps remain, according to the latest report from the National Oversight and Audit Committee (NOAC).

The Local Authority Performance Indicator Report 2018 reviews and compares the performance of local authorities on a range of services.

Revenue collection
Kilkenny County Council collected 93% of commercial rates owed to it in 2018, making it one of the lead local authorities in the country. While the figure was down two percentage points on the previous year, it remained in the top five percentages, tied with Meath County Council. Fingal (96%) was the highest, while Donegal (76%) was the lowest.

Housing
In terms of housing, the data shows the council owns 2,374 social housing units, 1.14% of which were vacant at the end of 2018. The average time it took to relet a house was 21.6 weeks, compared to the national average of 27.8 weeks.
The average cost incurred by the council in repair and maintenance of local authority housing in 2018 was €882.55.

Environment
In the environment category, 98% of areas surveyed were litter free or slightly littered, and 3% of areas were found to be moderately polluted. Kilkenny had the largest proportional increase (361.3%) among all local authorities from 2017 to 2018 in pollution cases closed. It attributed this to a clean-up of data and improved monitoring system.

Fire service
It took an average of 6.16 minutes to mobilise fire brigades for calls to fires, and 6.03 minutes in respect of non-fire emergencies. The average around the country was 5.34 minutes, with the lowest time in Sligo (3.42 minutes).

Waste
The percentage of households availing of a three-bin service in Kilkenny remains at the lower end of the scale. Kilkenny (15.9%) was one of seven local authorities that recorded brown bin uptake figures below 20%. Uptake was highest in Waterford City and County at 84.89%, and lowest in Donegal County Council at 2.81%, or 1,636 households.

PLANNING
Of all counties, Kilkenny had the lowest inspection rate of new buildings in 2018, at 5.9%. The national average was 23.4%, while Dublin City had the highest, at just under 70%. Kilkenny County Council said the number of buildings notified to it increased significantly during the year in question, but said it would focus on increasing its inspection regime going forward.

Library
Kilkenny had 17% library membership in 2018, an increase from 14%. The current national average is 18%. There was an average of 2.62 visits per head of population, and 268,284 items issued to borrowers.