The latest government figures have shown Derry City and Strabane council area has the highest number of potholes and road-surface defects in Northern Ireland.
Following a presentation to the council’s Environment and Regeneration Committee by DFI Roads Western Division, SDLP councillor Steven Edwards queried what was being done to solve the issue.
He said: “I have some correspondence that our council area has 3199 current potholes which is double the next council area which is Newry, Mourne and Down and triple what Belfast has. What’s being done to address this?
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He continued: “I get contacted by people constantly complaining about their cars being damaged and wanting to put claims in. Is there something that can be done there? We are paying out these fines for people damaging their cars rather than fixing potholes in my view.
Responding. Daniel Healy, Divisional Roads Manager of DFI Roads Western Division commented: “Our limited service policy allows us to repair any potholes over 50 millimetres on roads and any potholes over 20 millimetres on trunk roads or high vehicle roads.
“We would prefer to be able to address more potholes but unfortunately our budget does not allow us to do that at the minute.
“A number of those potholes that you refer to may not meet the criteria for intervention yet so these would be potholes on lesser traffic roads that would be between 0 and 50 millimetres deep, so unfortunately whilst they are a concern and do qualify as a pothole, at the minute our policy and our budget don’t allow us to address them until they are a certain depth.”
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