Debate contribution: Dilapidation Bill: Final Stage

Debate contribution by Mr Daniel McCrossan on 8 September 2026.

MLA: Mr Daniel McCrossan
Party at the time: Social Democratic and Labour Party
Date: 8 September 2026
Type: Debate contribution
Business: Executive Committee Business
Heading: Dilapidation Bill: Final Stage
Assembly identifier: Official Report component 5674215

Text

I welcome the Bill, and the SDLP will support it at Final Stage today. There is no doubt that councils need stronger powers to deal with dilapidated buildings and neglected sites. We all know the buildings that I am talking about; they are very prominent in all our constituencies. They have sat empty for years, with windows broken or boarded up, roofs falling in, drainpipes hanging off and weeds growing around them. People walk past them every day and wonder why nothing is being done to tackle that scourge. We see it in Strabane, we see it Omagh and we see it in towns and villages right across our society, so giving councils better powers to act is much welcomed. It is also worth remembering that the issue did not start with the Bill. It stretches back many years and has been through a very long process. Indeed, when the issue was raised in the Assembly in 2012, it was the SDLP Environment Minister Alex Attwood who recognised that the existing arrangements were not good enough and took action to support the councils in tackling dereliction. Michelle McIlveen acknowledged that during her contribution and gave credit to Alex Attwood for being willing to take the issue forward. However, we are 14 years down the line. It is welcome that we are finally getting the legislation across the line, and a considerable amount of work has gone into the Bill to get it to this point. As a member of the AERA Committee, I have been involved in the detailed scrutiny of it. The Committee considered the Bill at 22 meetings and took evidence from councils, Building Control, heritage organisations, architects, landlords, retailers and regeneration organisations. We heard different views, and, at times, serious concerns were expressed. We spent a considerable amount of time going through the detail and testing how these powers would work in practice. At this point, I acknowledge the departmental officials who repeatedly came before the Committee, answered the concerns of members, took our questions and engaged with the issues that we raised. That engagement helped to improve the Bill from what it originally was, but, after all that scrutiny, I still believe that we need to be realistic about what the Bill can actually achieve. It is only part of the answer; it is not the whole answer. Giving a council the power to serve notice does not give that council the money to restore a building; it does not make an expensive restoration project suddenly commercially viable; and it does not bring investment back into a struggling town centre. Our town centres are struggling. It needs much more. We need proper investment in regeneration, and we need support for restoration. We need to look at the fiscal levers available to government, and we need to look at rates and at what more can be done to encourage empty properties back into productive, sustainable use. We also need to tackle those who deliberately sit on properties and allow them to deteriorate, and all of us could state examples of where that is happening in our constituencies. There are owners who have the resources to maintain their properties but simply refuse to do so, maybe in the hope of a grant coming down the tracks. That is not acceptable. Councils should be able to take firm action in those cases. There are other buildings, particularly older and historic buildings, where the economics of restoration do not add up. That presents a very different problem. We need to be very careful in case an unintended consequence of the legislation is that demolition becomes the cheapest and easiest option. Once those buildings are gone, we will not get them back. There is also the question of resources for our councils. That came through strongly during our Committee scrutiny. If we give councils these powers but do not give them the capacity to use them, we will not achieve what the Bill intends to do. Potentially significant costs are involved.
Ownership can be complicated; legal action may be required; councils may have to spend money carrying out works before attempting to recover such costs; and, inevitably, there will be cases where recovery of that money will be difficult. We cannot simply pass the Bill, raise expectations among the public and then leave councils saying, "Yes, we have the power to do something, but we do not have the necessary resources".
I will take an intervention from the Minister.
I appreciate the Minister's intervention and clarification. It is an important point. As an MLA, I have worked with multiple organisations, large business owners and small business owners to see some restoration of their properties. One of the most recent examples was the old post office in Strabane. Thankfully, after considerable pressure, Royal Mail finally restored that historic structure, which it occupies to this day. There are premises that should be brought back into use and repurposed. They should be cosmetically pleasing and have a sustainable use for the local community. The big fear is that, where costs are difficult to recover and where councils face obstacles in recovering such costs, they could fall back on the ratepayer. The Committee was told that on many occasions throughout the scrutiny process. I also do not want to see a situation where the response depends on which council area you happen to live in. If one council has the resources to pursue such cases and another has not, we could see different levels of action. I appreciate the Minister's intervention, but that applies only in certain circumstances. The issues are wider. We need to watch this closely. The SDLP has worked constructively to improve the Bill. We appreciate the importance of it. If it does what it intends to do, it can only be a good thing, but there is a concern about the resources to back that up and some of the potential unintended consequences. My SDLP colleague Colin McGrath and I tabled a number of amendments, and I am pleased that we successfully secured some important changes. In particular, councils will now be required to maintain and publish an accessible register of action that they take under the new powers. That will only improve the transparency of the process and ensure that we can keep a close eye on what is happening. We also secured the provision that makes it necessary to record that information by district electoral area. That is important. It means that communities will be able to see where action is being taken. We will be able to see whether the powers are being used as they are prescribed and whether there are significant differences between areas. Unfortunately, the Assembly did not support another amendment that we tabled. We wanted a proper assessment of the prevalence of dilapidated buildings, dangerous structures and neglected sites across every council area. I remain disappointed that that was rejected, because we still have a basic problem: we do not have a proper baseline as to the scale of the problem. We know it in our individual constituencies, but we do not have a proper baseline for comparison across areas. We do not have a complete picture of the scale of dilapidation across Northern Ireland before the powers come into operation. Some councils have such a list. I am fortunate that Derry City and Strabane District Council has provided a local analysis of the Strabane town centre, particularly alongside the regeneration of the town centre, which is to be welcomed. When we come back to review the legislation across Northern Ireland generally, how will we properly measure its impact if we have not known the scale of the problem from the beginning? The register that we secured will tell us what councils have acted on, but it will not tell us how many dilapidated buildings remain untouched. That is an important distinction. The baseline assessment would have strengthened the Bill, and I hope that the Minister will consider revisiting that going forward. There is also an opportunity here. When we look at empty buildings in town centres, we should not just see an eyesore but ask what we can do with it. Could it become housing, for instance? Could the upper floors of shops become accommodation? Could it become a new business or some form of community benefit or tourism asset? Could we bring people and life back into our town centres? That is where the wider Executive need to step up. That is why I understand that this is not something that lies solely at the foot of the Minister.
This cannot simply become a problem that is handed to councils, but it also cannot be a problem for just the AERA Minister. Communities also have a responsibility for regeneration, and finance controls are important fiscal levers. DAERA introduced the legislation, but councils have a central role, and all of them need to work together constructively to improve the situation. I think of Strabane, where people have been promised regeneration for years. It took 10 years to get a regeneration scheme into the streets. The streets will now look great, but the buildings are in a terrible state of disrepair. Businesses are struggling because of various increased overheads and the difficulties that businesses are facing here and now. People want to see buildings occupied and businesses opening, but people need to support local businesses to ensure that they are sustainable. People want investment and to see their own town, in a parochial way, moving forward. We all have that close sense of heart to our own community and the town that we are from. The same applies in the Omagh area and in communities across Northern Ireland. I often think of Herdman's Mill, one of the most historic buildings in this place. It is a huge part of our industrial heritage, which you see when you look at the story behind it. Such buildings show exactly why early intervention matters. If we wait until a building has deteriorated to the point when restoration becomes impossible, we have waited too long and left it too late. I support giving councils the additional powers, but the real test comes after the Bill is passed. We need investment alongside those powers. I appeal to the Minister of Finance, the Minister for Communities, the Economy Minister and, indeed, the AERA Minister to work together to see something meaningful done that will see a serious approach taken by the Executive to see the regeneration of town centres across communities. We need the Government to use every available lever to bring empty and derelict buildings back into use, because people will judge the Bill not by the notices that councils serve but by whether the derelict buildings that they walk past every day or are looking at from their windows are still sitting derelict in five years' time. That is the test of the Bill, that is the test of the House, and that is the test of the Executive. The SDLP supports the Bill today, but we will continue to press the Minister, and the wider Executive to support the Minister, to ensure that these powers are backed by the investment and action needed to make a real difference for all of our community.

1,886 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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