Ards and North Down is asking for “urgent” action from Stormont on fair allocation road repair funds, after it emerged the borough had the highest rate of potholes and the lowest rate of funding.
At the recent monthly meeting of Ards and North Down Borough Council, UUP Councillor Philip Smith accepted a DUP amendment on his motion which originally appealed to the council to write to the Stormont Department for Infrastructure, to ask for a roads action plan for the borough, after it emerged Ards and North Down had the highest level of potholes in Northern Ireland.
The DUP addition, forwarded by DUP Councillor Robert Adair, asks that the council writes to the DfI permanent secretary “expressing concern that Ards continues to receive the lowest roads investment budget across NI’s councils and requests an increase in funding to make road repairs and resurfacing a priority.”
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It also asked for “fair allocation of funding for roads, pavements, resurfacing, and street lighting investment across our borough as a matter of urgency.”
Ards and North Down topped a league table of road defect reports across all NI, and accounted for 1,731 reported defects out of a total of approx 11,000 reported to the Stomont department in the last recorded year. That equates to 15.5 percent of complaints made by 11 councils.
It was also at the top of the table on potholes - with 148.6 reported per 100 km. The lowest was Derry with 21.8 per 100 km.
Councillor Robert Adair told the chamber at Bangor Town Hall: “We need to get to the root of the problem, and that is, Ards and North Down gets the lowest investment in road infrastructure in Northern Ireland. And while potholes are a big issue, the roads aren’t going to get any better, and the potholes aren’t going to get any better, until we address this issue.
“This issue first came to council two years ago when we brought a motion following MLA questions on the road budget in NI. We then learned we get the lowest funding, because the Roads service allocates their funding not on population, or on traffic volume, but on the length of roads.
“So a council like Fermanagh and Omagh, which has a lower traffic volume, gets far bigger investment in roads than Ards and North Down. At the time we wrote to Minister Mallon and her officials and they didn’t change the criteria. So it continues, and Ards and North Down continue to get a raw deal.
“This is the fourth largest population in Northern Ireland, we’re in close proximity to Belfast, we have the biggest coastline, it is a big tourist area, and I believe we deserve better. It is not fair our ratepayers continue to have substandard roads - and I have never seen our roads in such a state, in all my time as councillor.”
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