Millions wasted repairing NI roads

Money wasted repeatedly repairing roads

By BBC NI environment correspondent Mike McKimm

Money wasted each year repairing damage by the utilities in Northern Ireland is equivalent to that needed to build a major bypass.

That is the astonishing revelation in a report published on Thursday from the Northern Ireland Audit Office.

But finger of blame also points at the Roads Service, who seem to have squandered millions of pounds of tax payers money, by doing nothing about it.

The utility companies who lay phone lines, gas pipes and electricity cables under the roads in Northern Ireland are roundly criticised for the serious damage they leave behind in the report.

Almost three quarters of road repairs carried out by one company over a 10-month period were unacceptable but the worst offender is the Water Service.

Gregory Campbell: Ironic departmental responsibility for waste

Almost half of all their road repairs were faulty - a point of particular embarrassment for the regional development minister Gregory Campbell - who is responsible for both roads and water.

He is now writing to the chief executives of all the main utilities, including his own Water Service, warning them to do better in the future.

The report also challenges the Road Service's failure to respond to the problem that costs them more than £10m a year.

The report says the Road Service failed to implement new legislation, to collect inspection fees, co-ordinate road works or recover the cost of repairs.

The service simply failed to adopt them, despite the fact that the necessary legislation and codes of conduct where there already.

None of this will be news to Northern Ireland's motorists.

They have clocked up millions of hours of delay while roads that had been dug up and then reinstated, were dug up all over again to be repaired properly.

One main route into Belfast - the Ormeau Road between Ormeau Bridge and Donegall Pass - was dug up 75 times in two years over a length of just 1000 meters.