AQW 2352/10

Mrs Naomi Long
Alliance Party
East Belfast

Tabled Date: 03/11/2009
Answered On Date: 18/11/2009
Priority Written: No

Question:
To ask the Minister for Social Development, when the finance becomes available to reopen the Home Improvement Grants scheme, if she will consider prioritising applications on the basis of urgency, rather than on a first come first served basis.

Answer:

The Housing Executive currently has in place a system to deal with those cases where it becomes apparent that exceptional circumstances exist, such as an imminent and significant health and safety risk, and these cases are already permitted to progress their grant. The Housing Executive has carefully considered the best course of action should additional funding become available and concluded that the fairest most equitable method would be to proceed on a date order basis. Should additional funding becoming available, the Housing Executive intends to prioritise those cases where statutory applications had been refused because of a lack of funding (“Category 1” cases ) over those cases which had been cancelled at the Preliminary Enquiry stage which had not reached application stage (“Category 2” cases). The Housing Executive will first contact the Category 1 cases to advise them accordingly and any applications arising out of those cases will be processed to approval stage in strict date order. Then, if funding is still available after the processing of any Category 1 cases, the Category 2 cases will be contacted in strict date order of receipt of the original preliminary enquiry, and up to the level that the additional funding will permit.