The Transport Minister has been forced to cut back on road maintenance work in NI following budget cuts.

Mr Danny Kennedy has raised concerns over the £60 million cuts to the Department for Regional Development in 2015/16, more than half of which will fall to TransportNI, which are having a significant impact on services in particular maintenance activities in all areas.

Minister Kennedy: "As it stands, my budget does not provide for sufficient service provision in areas like repair of potholes, street lights and traffic signals and other measures such as gully emptying and grass cutting at junctions. As a result, my Department has no option other than to cut back on the routine maintenance of the network. There will be no funding available for external contractors to carry out routine road maintenance, however, the Department's internal workforce will be providing a skeleton service for the first part of the year, at least.

-- Advertisement --

"Road Inspections will currently continue as normal, however, only the highest priority potholes will be repaired. Gully emptying and grass cutting services will be provided on a reduced scale. There will be limited weed control and maintenance of white lines and only one quarter of the required resource available to repair street lighting outages. Contractors will still be employed to carry out electrical inspection and testing of street lights and the repair of hazardous electrical and structural defects."

The Minister has pledged to bid for resource funding in monitoring rounds to return routine maintenance services to normal levels.

(CD/MH)