Calls to scrap ‘to let’ requirement for vacant Tipperary commercial property
A local councillor has criticised the practice of erecting to let signs on vacant properties in Tipperary that are not genuinely available for rent, claiming it misleads the public and harms local commerce.
Fine Gael councillor John Fitzgerald, believes that there should be changes in how property owners apply for commercial rates waivers.
Under the current system, a property owner who is seeking an exemption on their commercial rates if their property is out of use for whatever reason, has to put a to let sign on the shop, even if they’re not actually seeking new tenants.
Speaking to the Irish Independent, Cllr Fitzgerald said that being made to jump through bureaucratic hoops isn't a good thank you to people who have paid rates for years.
"It’s not a great thank you to the business people that have done business for decades and paid rates for decades and because for one reason or another that they’re now coming vacant, they’ve been forced down this road of another business, which is landlordism,” Cllr Fitzgerald hit out.
"It makes a town look ugly with too many to let signs in my view, it’s a lazy old way of achieving the waiver,” he said.
The Clonmel-based councillor is also an auctioneer and valuer, and says that a better way of getting a waiver on commercial rates must be found.
"Surely to god there must be an easier way of claiming the waiver, to say ‘look, my premises is empty, I’m putting you on notice, it’s empty now, we will be doing something in time’.
"The council have a view that this is a whip to make people use unused space, and it’s not, all they do is they tick the boxes, but the place is not really for letting because it’s not fit for letting,” he explained.
“It’s a lie to say that these places are to let – they’re not to let,” Cllr Fitzgerald said.
The process is taking up the time of auctioneers across the county, he added, and that it’s taking up valuable council time and resources.
"Someone in the council’s time is being taken up monitoring all this, when they could be doing way more fruitful things,” Cllr Fitzgerald said.
Dissatisfied with the answer he got from Tipperary County Council, the Fine Gael councillor said he would raise it again at a Strategic Policy Committee (SPC) meeting.
"I raised it probably on the wrong day, but I just threw it in there,” he said.
“I have to go back to an economic workshop and bring it to the council through an SPC, so that’s what I intend to do,” Cllr Fitzgerald concluded.