The Infrastructure Minister has further defended the mysterious disappearance of pothole reports from the portal, calling it an “erroneous” update – but not a deletion!
A letter from Minister Kimmins was included in the schedule of correspondence at the most recent full meeting of Armagh, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council on March 23.
It was written in response to a letter from Council’s Deputy Chief Executive, Charlene Stoops, sent on February 6 seeking information on the Department’s online reporting system and the condition of the road network.
The issues had been raised in council chambers on January 26, whereby Alliance Councillor Peter Lavery argued that just after Christmas a “strong majority of cases” that his office was dealing with with DfI had an update placed on their notice on the portal saying “defects superseded by new enquiries”.
The Councillor argued it simply “wasn’t good enough” and that some of these reports would have carried potentially “serious” health and safety consequences.
Shortly after the meeting, a member of the public contacted Armagh I to say they too had noticed pothole reports they had made disappearing from the NI Direct website.
Related: DfI’s defence of pothole report removals has as many holes as the roads themselves
The complaint prompted this publication to make a number of our own reports of potholes in the local area. Sure enough, a few weeks later and one had been removed.
We visited the site and no repair work had taken place, nor had the defect been marked for repair.
In the Minister’s letter to Ms Stoops, she explained that with “recent storms, prolonged rainfall, ice and snow” taking their toll on the roads, her officials had been working “very hard to address the increasing number of defects that have resulted”.
She said around 50,000 defects have been recorded in the last three months alone, which is “close to half the total for the whole of the previous year”.
In addition to securing an additional £7.85m of funding for a Winter Recovery Road Fund to allow an urgent and direct focus on repairing the surface defects which are causing the most concern, the Minister said she has also asked her officials to “explore every avenue to maximise our available workforce capacity to ensure we are doing as much as we can as quickly as possible”.
In regards to pothole issues, Minister Kimmins asserts the high volume of reports has “delayed many ad-hoc site investigations by local staff” who are currently working to deliver the increased number of repairs.
She continued: “As such, a number of these reports will be reviewed during the next routine safety inspection where it is safe to do so.
“The pothole issues recently reported in the Armagh, Banbridge & Craigavon, were correctly updated to be investigated during an upcoming scheduled safety inspection, and repair work ordered subject to the defect meeting my Department’s current maintenance policy.”
However, she noted: “I am informed by my officials that a supplementary comment, ‘Defects superseded by new Enquiries’ was erroneously added to these records leading to some confusion, when a customer views the details on the online portal.
“I can confirm the enquiry records were not deleted and measures have been taken to prevent a recurrence of this issue.”
Armagh I has enquired with the Department about why one of our reports has been removed from the NI Direct website without any remedial action having been taken.
An email requesting clarification on this matter was sent on March 20, however, a response has not yet been received.
Updates will be provided in due course.
