DUP MLA complains Derry got four times the road maintenance spend of Ards & North Down
A DUP MLA has complained more money was spent on road maintenance in Derry & Strabane than in Ards & North Down in 2023/24.
Peter Martin complained £11.4m was invested in structural maintenance in the North West out of an overall budget of £127.4 million during that year.
"There are 11 council areas in Northern Ireland, so a quick back-of-the-matchbox calculation means that, on average, council areas should get around £11·5 million.
"You would expect some areas to get more or less, depending on the size of their road network, but the scale of the disparity is what is most telling,” Mr. Martin said during a debate at Stormont on Tuesday.
He continued: “I will work off that base figure of £11.5 million. Ards and North Down Borough Council got just £3 million, which is a quarter of the average.
"The next lowest — Lisburn and Castlereagh City Council — was allocated £7·5 million, which is two and a half times what Ards and North Down Borough Council received.”
He went on to claim that this was an example of money flowing to the west to the detriment of eastern constituencies.
"We often hear about how the west of the Bann is the forgotten country, but Mid Ulster District Council received £21 million, while Derry and Strabane District Council got £11.4m, which, despite being a smaller geographical area, is nearly four times what Ards and North Down Borough Council received.
"You could perhaps make the argument that that variation in capital funding is then offset by resource. However, it is not. Ards and North Down Borough Council is also bottom of the table for resource funding in two of the past three years. Only one council got less, so, excitingly, for one year, Ards and North Down Borough Council was one from the bottom,” he said.
The DUP MLA claimed that in the last year there were more defects in his home constituency than in Derry & Strabane.
“The figures in the response to an Assembly question show that, in the past year, Ards and North Down Borough Council recorded 1,816 actionable defects compared with 516 in the Derry City and Strabane District Council area, which received nearly four times the funding,” he declared.