Member's statement: Unadopted Developments: Private Member's Bill

Member's statement by Mrs Deborah Erskine on 1 July 2025.

MLA

Mrs Deborah Erskine

Party at the time

Democratic Unionist Party

Date

1 July 2025

Type

Member's statement

Business

Members' Statements

Heading

Unadopted Developments: Private Member's Bill

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5061120

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Today, I launch the public consultation on my private Member's Bill, which will seek to tackle a long-standing and deeply frustrating problem for many homeowners and communities across Northern Ireland: unadopted developments. I urge the industry and homeowners to get involved by giving their views. The Bill is not about restricting housebuilding or the housing market but about fairness for people who bought their home in good faith, believing that the appropriate infrastructure would be available outside their front door. The Bill is the product of my listening to constituents, residents' groups, colleagues, developers and even officials from the Department for Infrastructure. The common message is that the current system is broken. Too many homeowners find themselves trapped in housing developments that they had been promised would be fully completed and adopted, with the associated roads, footpaths, street lighting and green spaces, yet, years after moving in, they are left with unfinished infrastructure, uncertainty as to where the responsibility lies and very few answers. Mr Speaker, I declare an interest as someone who lives in an unadopted development. It is unacceptable that families who pay their rates and mortgage — who do everything right — are left to live in a development with street lights that do not work, with roads that are not resurfaced and with basic public services being withheld, because, for a variety of reasons, the development was never adopted by the relevant authority. In many cases, residents feel abandoned. They are caught between developers, the Department for Infrastructure and Northern Ireland Water (NIW). All the while, their quality of life suffers, and the value of their home may also be affected. My Bill is not about punishing developers or shifting the burden on to local authorities. Rather, it is about creating a fair, transparent and enforceable system that ensures that developments are completed to an adoptable standard before the keys are handed over. Crucially, it is about restoring residents' trust in the Government and the private sector. We need to send a clear message that developments must not be left in limbo and that homeowners should not be left to foot the bill for unfinished work. I thank residents from across Northern Ireland who have contributed to the process so far, particularly those from Fermanagh and South Tyrone, by sharing their first-hand experiences. The issue cuts across urban and rural areas. It affects people from all backgrounds and has persisted for far too long. Today, we take the first step towards ending the inertia. Hopefully, by getting the public's views, we can start to build a system that is fair and enforceable and, above all, that puts residents first.

443 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 12:57 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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