Waringstown roundabout repair work request dates back to 2017
An Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon councillor has revealed that he has been lobbying the Department for Infrastructure (DfI) for the past seven years to have a small roundabout fixed.
Alderman Mark Baxter told fellow members at the council’s latest monthly meeting of his lengthy wait for work to be done to the roundabout in Milfort Park, Waringstown.
The DUP representative for Lagan River DEA acknowledged that the work requested is very much low-priority and minor in nature, however he felt compelled to raise the matter, given the seven-year wait.
Addressing DfI Roads divisional manager, Mark McPeak, Ald Baxter remarked: “In terms of low-priority stuff, when does that eventually fall off if it’s not done? Is there a timeframe? I’m looking at the email I sent in 2017 – I’m not trying to be clever – about a roundabout in Milfort Park in Waringstown.
"I was told it would be fixed. I followed it up in 2018, 2019, 2020, and right up as far as 2022. I was just continued to be told it was low-priority, so I gave up in 2022.
"So I’m actually just wondering, is there a cut-off time? It is low-priority, so it’s not a big issue, it’s not a high-level strategic thing, but it’s important to the people who live there. Is there a cut-off time or will that always be on the list?”
Mr McPeak replied: “Priorities are public safety-related. We will prioritise our work capital or resource to make improvements, and we utilise our annual budget starting at the high-priority work, and working our way down the priority list. Generally, our annual budget is not enough to go down to the lower-priority functions.
"Year on year we don’t know how much money we’re going to get, but since limited services started in 2015, generally we have been underfunded and we’ve never been able to get to those lower-priority issues.
"Again, year on year we find things that can deteriorate more quickly, and other things suddenly become a priority. So those things that are low priority now or back in 2017 may deteriorate quickly, and those may become higher priority over time.
"We try and utilise the money the best we can. We make in-year bids in October and January to seek more funding, to be able to fix more defects, but we can only spend the money we get.
"We would like to spend a lot more, we would like to get a lot more. We know what needs done, we know how to do it, but regrettably we haven’t got enough funding or enough people to be able to do all that. Northern Ireland can have whatever quality of road network it wants, it just needs funded.”