Derry and Strabane Council has been told the Department for Infrastructure (DfI) is operating with a budget of less than half of what it needs to maintain the road network.

DfI presented to council to discuss its annual report on the road work across the Derry & Strabane Council area.

The capital budget for the structural maintenance of the road network in 202-24 is £85m. DfI previously found £143m a year was needed, adjusted for inflation it says this comes to £192m.

DfI representative Daniel Healy said the department faces significant challenges with this year's budget.

“To be clear, we're not implementing this policy because we think it's a good way to maintain our roads or good practice. We've adopted this practice to work within the budget allocated to us,” he said.

“The delivery of services during the past few years has been challenging for the department. And unfortunately it's no different this year.

“The department is facing a number of constraints, including a 14% reduction in its resource budget allocation this year when compared to last. I'm sure you appreciate that this presents a significant challenge to the department to continue to provide the level of service expected by the public.”

He added that while the DfI sometimes gets additional money allocated later in the financial year, this is unlikely this year due to the absence of the Assembly.

“If further monies do become available during the year, we hope to be in a position to utilise it for additional resurfacing or maintenance works across the council area.

“We continue to implement our limited service policy across our maintenance activities, which means only the most severe defects are repaired. I know that many councillors have contacted the Department to question the suitability of this policy.

“As roads engineers we’re acutely aware of the effect that the poor road condition can have on the people of Northern Ireland who use our network. Possibly more significantly, we’re aware that the current policy and level of funding may have longer term detrimental effects on the quality of our infrastructure, making it more expensive to maintain our roads in the future.

“However, we're managing the network as best we can to minimise the safety risks to road users and stay within our budget which as I mentioned earlier, is currently very challenging.”

Proper funding

Councillor Shaun Harkin asked what level of work the DfI could be doing if it was properly funded.

“We had an investment conference here where the Secretary of State talked about here becoming ‘a Hong Kong’, it just doesn't seem likely that we're going to become ‘a Hong Kong’ if the Secretary of State won't invest in our road network properly, because you need infrastructure to have a thriving economy,” the People Before Profit councillor said.

“What work could we be doing, if we were actually properly funding our roads network?”

DfI representative Colin Woods said ‘in an ideal world' the DfI 'would be investing in many more schemes'.

“Apart from anything else, it's much cheaper to repair the road quicker than to come in and have to do a more substantial intervention later,” Mr Woods said

He added that the lack of resources is taking a toll on road workers at DfI.

“Roughly £190 million was the gap that we were trying to make up on the resource side, where the vast majority of our wages come from, at the start of the year. You can see how that really does start to limit choices in terms of pay amongst other things, and it also has a direct impact on our people when we can't afford to fill vacancies.

“So within my group in the department, we have over 400 vacancies but only about 40 of those are funded and only 40 of those, therefore, we can progress to fill. The rest we have to just try and carry on and manage without.

“Certainly, from my perspective, I recognise the impact that has on our teams and I know that makes some of the issues we're dealing with harder.”

He said DfI is trying to be transparent about the low budget and what it’s prioritising as a result of it.

“Publishing our prioritisation of our major road schemes where we continue to highlight the priority given to the A5 and the A6 for example is one way that we've tried to do that.

“The maintenance backlog that has existed over the last 10 years or so is running close to a billion pounds worth of investment in either essential maintenance from our resource budget, or the structural maintenance and the larger resurfacing schemes from our capital budget.”

Prioritised projects

Independent Councillor Raymond Barr asked how DfI chooses how to spend the limited budget and ‘if there is a policy of prioritising specific areas of work over others?’.

Mr Healy said prioritisation is typically based on a ‘safety background’.

“If there are areas of work where there are identified safety risks and then those will be prioritised first. When it comes down to that, you start looking at areas where you'll have a hierarchy of volume of vehicles or number of accidents or those sorts of ways that we prioritise from top to bottom,” the DfI representative said.

“With regards to things like our program of resurfacing, what we tend to try and do is hit our high vehicle count roads first, our trunk road network and then once that's finished, because that affects the most users, we move on to our other roads on the network.

“The one caveat I would say to that is, as I mentioned earlier, if there's an identity, take the risk, and we move to that one first.”

Cllr Harkin asked if the department ever sends unspent money back at the end of the financial year.

He also asked if they are sending money back if it would benefit them to ‘go back to recruiting workers’ as public servants and ensure ‘every penny that we have’ is spent to get work done?

Mr Healy said it is rarely the case that they have unspent money to send back.

“Certainly in my time here in Western Division, we've always been in a position to take additional monies rather than sending money back,” he said.

“The nature of the work that we do sort of lends itself to taking any additional monies at the end of the year because we can spend significant amounts of money in a relatively short time frame for our resurfacing works.”

Mr Healy added that they are currently trying to fill staff vacancies.

“We'll have the outcome of that recruitment competition in a fairly short time frame,” he said.

“In the past we have carried out quite a few additional operations using our in-house workforce. Unfortunately, as that has reduced in size over the last number of years, the size and the number of jobs that we can complete using them has also reduced in size, which has a detrimental effect on how we spend our money because we end up using external contractors.

“So I certainly take your point with regard to that. But I think there is a constraint on the department with regards to how we can fill those posts.”

DfI workers have been on strike this summer, further complicating the provision of road works. Cllr Harkin urged that they find a solution as a matter of urgency.