Council chiefs have knocked back a request to take over maintenance of a private road in a former army barracks as it was “unaffordable” and would open the floodgates for others.
Dundonald Crescent, Auchengate, formerly known as the Army Barracks, was vacated and sold to the Ministry of Defence (MOD) in 2005.
Before that, the MOD had been in contact with North Ayrshire Council to enquire about roads in the estate being adopted by them for future maintenance.
Officers liaised with the MOD and put forward costs associated with upgrading the road to an adoptable standard and be taken over. However, as the MOD were not prepared to fund the work, maintenance responsibility was transferred to the residents.
In 2018, another request for the road to be upgraded was made by a property management company. The council prepared a schedule of work with costs but the company were not prepared to take it forward.
A motion was passed by full council in November which stated a member/officer working group would look into current and historic issues in the area and to try and find a positive solution.
Officers again updated the cost estimate for upgrading and adopting the estate roads, including footways, street lighting and drainage.
There was high uncertainty in the extent of drainage works and an allowance had to be made for renewal of the drainage system which alone would cost more than £300,000.
There's also been a significant increase in the cost of construction materials and this resulted in the latest estimate for upgrading Dundonald Crescent to an adoptable standard being around £700,000 for construction.
Along with design and site supervision costs, an allowance for contingencies and VAT resulted in estimated costs of more than £1 million.
Officers set up a working group of cross-party elected members in January to consider the findings.
At the meeting, members were advised the council has over 300 listings of private residential streets in North Ayrshire which, based on the rates used within Dundonald Crescent, could cost around £90 million to upgrade.#
A number of residents within private streets over the years have requested council support when it comes to maintenance.
The council feels upgrading Dundonald Crescent at public expense would create a precedent and would likely lead to further requests.
The working group found that responsibility for the road and associated infrastructure lies with the owners and agreed the council did not undertake the work.
Councillor Christina Larsen said at cabinet: “I attended the working group with two other Irvine South members but there was a general consensus that this was just unaffordable.”
Council leader Marie Burns added: “I hope the message in the report about the proliferation of these requests and the costs that it would be for the council to respond to them gets out there because we don’t want to be in the position of continuing to review these requests if we know there's not a lot we can do about it because of the costs involved.
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