Westmeath has the best roads in the country

Westmeath has the best regional roads in the country, according to a new report.

The latest report by the independent watchdog of local government has examined the performance of Westmeath County Council and other local authorities in 2020 across 11 areas.

The annual report, by the National Oversight and Audit Commission (NOAC), found the council delivered “mixed results” in a range of areas including housing, the environment and financial management.

One area in which Westmeath is ahead of the rest of the country is the quality of its regional roads. Almost 57pc of the county’s regional roads have a Pavement Surface Condition Index rating of 9 to 10, which means that they have “no defectors or are less than 10pc defective”.

While Westmeath may have some of the best roads in the country, when it comes to the provision of brown bins, it is lagging behind the rest of the country. At the end of last year just over a third of houses (35pc) in towns and villages of more than 500 people had access to a three-bin service (standard waste, recyclables, food waste).

The report revealed that County Westmeath had one of the lowest costs per capita (€33.14) for providing the fire service. Only two counties, Meath (€30.69) and Kildare (€32) had lower per capita costs. The authors reported that Westmeath’s retained fire service had the slowest response time (7 minutes 32 37 seconds) for non-fire incidents. The response time for fires is 6 minutes 24 seconds.

The local fire service attended a quarter of all fires within 10 minutes last year; 60 per cent were attended between 10 and 20 minutes, 15 per cent after 20 minutes.

Covid provided many challenges for local authorities, but Westmeath County Council only lost 3.21pc of paid working days to certified sick leave last year, just slightly higher than the national average of 3.01pc.

Housing is arguably the biggest challenge facing Irish society at present. At the end of last year, the council owned 2,025 social housing dwellings, of which 2.38pc were vacant on December 31.

The average re-letting time for vacant social housing units in Westmeath was 22 weeks, while the cost of doing up a house for a new tenant was €16,901 per unit.

There were 6,249 registered tenancies in Westmeath at the end of last year. The council inspected 452 of those rented dwellings in 2020 and less that three per cent were compliant with regulations.

There were 40 adults classified as long-term homeless in Westmeath on December 31.

There are still many broadband black-spots across the county that the affected communities hope will soon become a thing of the past thanks to the rollout of the National Broadband Plan.

In total 77pc of local motorists renewed their motor tax online last year, the third lowest percentage in the country.

Commenting on the publication of the report, the chairperson of NOAC Performance Indicator Working Group, Philomena Poole, said: “Public health restrictions and the increased challenges local authorities faced in providing essential services, along with the reduction in income, has impacted performance under various indicator headings. However, re-letting time and cost have again increased and although Covid-19 has impacted this area, NOAC notes that there has been a steady rise in re-letting costs since 2014, with only a small decrease shown in 2019 compared to the prior year.”