Debate contribution: North Down Road Network: Investment
Debate contribution by Mr Peter Martin on .
- MLA
- Mr Peter Martin
- Party at the time
- Democratic Unionist Party
- Date
- 1 April 2025
- Type
- Debate contribution
- Business
- Adjournment
- Heading
- North Down Road Network: Investment
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 4877213
Read the official Assembly record
Text
Thank you very much, Mr Deputy Speaker. The way to empty a Chamber in less than a minute is to have a debate on North Down's roads. I am thankful to our SDLP colleagues for joining us for the debate, albeit one of them is going now. Mr Deputy Speaker, thank you for allowing me the opportunity to bring my Adjournment topic to the Chamber. Upon becoming an MLA and setting up my constituency office in Bangor last year, I knew that road maintenance or lack thereof would be a big issue of community concern. What has taken me aback in particular, however, is the level of complaints and the state of our roads. Every MLA throughout Northern Ireland, most of whom have just left the Chamber, will complain about the lack of road maintenance in their area, but the people in the Ards and North Down Borough Council area have a more justified reason to complain. That is because they are being treated unfairly by the Department for Infrastructure. The area has been underfunded in comparison with other council areas — I will highlight some figures during my speech — and, while we can all have opinions about a great many matters, facts are harder to dispute. I appreciate that the Minister has not been in post particularly long and that her predecessor, Mr O'Dowd, was in post for only about a year, but it is her Department. I am hoping that she will take on board some of the things that I will share. My DUP colleague Michelle McIlveen, in a question for written answer, asked the previous Minister, John O'Dowd, to provide a breakdown of the budget allocated for road maintenance in each of the past three years. The response from DFI detailed the total structural maintenance costs, including resource and capital. In the 2023-24 financial year, the total budget for structural maintenance in Northern Ireland was £127·4 million. There are 11 council areas in Northern Ireland, so a quick back-of-the-matchbox calculation means that, on average, council areas should get around £11·5 million. You would expect some areas to get more or less, depending on the size of their road network, but the scale of the disparity is what is most telling. I will work off that base figure of £11·5 million. Ards and North Down Borough Council got just £3 million, which is a quarter of the average. The next lowest — Lisburn and Castlereagh City Council — was allocated £7·5 million, which is two and a half times what Ards and North Down Borough Council received. We often hear about how the west of the Bann is the forgotten country, but Mid Ulster District Council received £21 million, while Derry and Strabane District Council got £11·4 million, which, despite being a smaller geographical area, is nearly four times what Ards and North Down Borough Council received.
You could perhaps make the argument that that variation in capital funding is then offset by resource. However, it is not. Ards and North Down Borough Council is also bottom of the table for resource funding in two of the past three years. Only one council got less, so, excitingly, for one year, Ards and North Down Borough Council was one from the bottom.
What reason does the Department give for why we are so far behind other council areas in roads funding? That question, to a degree, remains unanswered, and I hope that the Minister will address it in her comments. However, in response to a question from Ards and North Down Borough Council, DFI said:
"in distributing the resources available for capital structural maintenance, allocations to the four DfI Roads Divisions are made based on need, using a range of weighted indicators tailored to each maintenance activity. Divisions broadly use these indictors when apportioning across council areas to ensure, as far as possible, an equitable distribution of funding. The weighted indicators used in apportioning Capital (asset improvement, ie resurfacing, large patch repairs, etc) funding are updated annually and relate to; • length and area of the road network, • population of the Section Office area, • number of actionable defects identified in the previous 12 months."
On the roads network, I compared Ards and North Down Borough Council with a council of a similar size. It is quite similar to Lisburn and Castlereagh City Council, which has received an allocation of £22·3 million in the past three years. You would expect Ards and North Down Borough Council to get about 85% of that, which would be £18·9 million. We received £13·9 million, so that cannot be the formula that DFI is using. In fact, Ards and North Down Borough Council has the fourth largest council area by population, so that is not a factor either. The figures in the response to an Assembly question show that, in the past year, Ards and North Down Borough Council recorded 1,816 actionable defects compared with 516 in the Derry City and Strabane District Council area, which received nearly four times the funding. So, that not a factor either. We then pressed the Department further, and it said:
"The allocation process and how it is apportioned across Council / Section Office areas is complex ….. Should such detailed information be released to the public it may be scrutinised by others i.e. contractors across contract areas and could potentially cause harm (claim / dispute) to the Department and/or existing contracts. In addition, such information is unlikely to be released under Freedom of Information."
That last line is concerning, and I believe that the Department is, to a degree, closing ranks. It seems not to want that looked into any further, which is unfair. The lack of roads maintenance is not just frustrating; it can weaken inward investment. Balloo Avenue in Bangor, which is home to a significant number of businesses and an industrial complex, is in a really poor state. What message does that send to investors who may want to locate in the area? My constituency office has received numerous reports of constituents falling over paving stones that are a trip hazard and injuring themselves. Ultimately, the Department has had to pay out insurance claims in some of those cases. The Department's response, as far as I am aware — I am happy to be corrected — is that it has resurfaced one footpath in the past year. I have been pushing for the installation of a much-needed pedestrian crossing on the four-lane Bangor ring road. That would allow pupils from St Columbanus' College, a post-primary maintained school, and local residents to cross that busy carriageway safely. The scheme continues to be delayed, and it has been pushed into a future financial year. I have engaged with a number of constituents who are blind, and we highlighted the issue in the press recently. They have been campaigning to get that crossing. However, they now have another year of crossing that road, which is extremely dangerous for people who are sighted and even more dangerous for people who are visually impaired. I want to see all roads in North Down being safe to cross, and I do not want to see people losing their life in road accidents because of road safety mistakes. Roads engineers and the people whom we, as MLAs, deal with day-to-day are really good. I am sure that my colleagues in the Chamber for the debate would agree that we have a really good working relationship with all of them. They are doing their level best with the resources that are provided to them. I am going to highlight five specific areas, and I ask the Minister to get back to me on each of them at some point, if she can. I do not expect her to know every road in North Down or necessarily to have answers on these today, but, if she can get back to me at some point, I would very much appreciate it. The High Bangor Road, which connects Bangor and Donaghadee, colloquially has the sobriquet "Pothole Central", and it needs urgent attention. Onslow Gardens' pavements are a trip hazard, and there are many elderly residents in that area. Albany Road is literally disintegrating as we speak, and a track runs all the way down the middle of it. The pavements on the lower half of Clandeboye Road and on Church Street are in an appalling state of disrepair. Finally, the footpaths in Killeen Drive and Belmont Crescent have broken slabs, trip hazards and, again, are in a dreadful state. Maybe we notice and step over those broken pavements and the trip hazards that they present, but, for elderly folk in particular, they are really dangerous; a fall, if you are elderly, can be debilitating. That is why I would love to see action on them. I could go on. Apparently, I have an entire four minutes to go, but you will all be glad to know that I am not going to fill them. I ask the Minister at least to review personally the areas that I mentioned and, at an appropriate time, to come back to me with answers as to whether something can be done and when it can be done. The current capital provision that I outlined does not meet an equality standard, and it certainly does not go as far as the demands of equity. That is to say that North Down, I believe, is being short-changed in comparison with other council areas in Northern Ireland, and that must be addressed. I want to see action from the Minister — I am sure that she wants to see action herself — and a plan of what she can do to ensure that my constituency receives a fair and reasonable allocation of roads funding, so that the standards of our roads and footpaths do not fall even further behind those in other council areas.
1,656 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
Assessment
Awaiting analysis
This record has not been analysed yet. It is not counted in any total until it has been assessed.
Disagree with this assessment?
Classifications can be challenged. A person reviews every challenge, and any change is recorded publicly above with its reason.