Car parks across Bangor and Ards will not be at an acceptable level for 38 years
Car parks in the Ards and North Down Council area will not all reach a required standard for another 38 years, officials have reported.
Councillors have been told by officials it would take this amount of time to bring the council’s public car parks up to the required 85 percent standard, given the paucity of current council finances going into them.
But they rejected a UUP plan to spend council cash reserves on car park improvements as a temporary measure.
The council’s car park strategy, agreed in 2021, set out a vision for across the board improvements, including resurfacing, new line marking utilising the upper end of the standard widths for parking spaces to help accommodate larger, SUV type vehicles. It also aimed to introduce drop-kerbs for wheelchair use and LED lighting.
However, an official report states: “The implementation of such an improvement programme would not be possible within the current budget availability.”
The report states: “A large proportion of the council’s 70 plus car parks were transferred to the council from the Stormont Department for Infrastructure during the Review of Public Administration in 2015. Many of those car parks were in a poor state of repair, with poor surfacing and marking and old inefficient lighting.
“Many car parks still have not had the title transferred from DfI and some had issues involving land ownership and unauthorised entries/rights of way.”
The report states that the council currently has budgeted £50k per year in capital budgets for car park resurfacing. It adds that was insufficient to complete all of the necessary works to one single car park, the borough’s lowest scoring car park at Holborn Avenue, Bangor, a process which was facing legal problems.
At the full meeting of the council at Bangor Castle, divisions broke out in the chamber after the UUP proposed using council reserves to further the works.
UUP Alderman Philip Smith’s proposal stated: “Understanding that the current car parking refurbishment programme is inadequately funded, officers are asked to develop a cost of maintenance plan to improve the state of our car park estate using funds from our accumulated strategic reserves to finance the works over the medium to long-term.”
He added: “We don’t know when DfI is going to bring (the legislation) forward. We are in their hands, and the strategy is in aspic until that takes place. The purpose of this amendment is to have something in the interim, so we can do more than just £50,000 of investment over the next year – which is not even a drop in the ocean.
DUP Alderman Stephen McIlveen said: “We are being asked to commit to something without knowing what “short to medium term” means, what costs are to be allocated from it, and even whether or not we can take it out of strategic reserves.”
Alliance Councillor Patricia Morgan said: “There is absolutely no doubt the state of our car parks are dreadful, and this wait of 38 years is completely unacceptable.
“But we just can’t make a decision of this nature, with these words, at this time. We don’t know what the cost of maintenance plans might look like, or the timeline, and to suggest that we just take it from strategic reserves, because that’s what we feel like – we just cannot behave like that. It’s financially irresponsible.”
In a non-recorded vote, eight elected members were in favour of the UUP proposal, while 24 were against, and three abstained.