A council area in Northern Ireland will not have all its car parks at a required standard for another 38 years, officials have reported.
Ards and North Down Borough councillors have been told by officials it would take almost four decades to bring its public car parks up to the required 85 percent standard, given the paucity of current council finances going into them.
The council’s car park strategy, agreed in 2021, set out a vision for a “high standard public asset that realised its full potential in helping to promote a sustainable borough – driving forward economic, environmental and social well-being”.
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It intends to administer across the board improvements, including resurfacing, as well as new line marking utilising the upper end of the standard widths for parking spaces to help accommodate larger, SUV type vehicles. It also aims to introduce fully DDA compliant spacing, with drop-kerbs for wheelchair use and LED lighting.
It plans to introduce enhanced signage and environmental features, planting, bicycle and motorcycle parking facilities, and EV charging infrastructure.
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.”
It adds: “The council currently has £171,000 of priority capital works required to its car parks that fall below a 75 percent condition score, and that budget requirement increases to £2.1 million if a higher condition score of 85 percent is to be achieved. An 85 percent condition threshold is in line with what has generally been considered acceptable for its buildings over past budgeting cycles.
“At the current budget allocation, achievement of an 85 percent condition score would take 38 years to complete, and in the meantime those and other car parks will continue to deteriorate and require further work.
“Indeed, the expected lifespan of the bitmac surface would be approximately 20 years, meaning the council would perpetually be 'behind the curve' when trying to address the backlog of work with the budget available. It is therefore clear that the current budget allocation is insufficient if even a reasonable standard of car park condition is to be achieved.”
The report states that the council currently has budgeted £50k per year in capital budgets for car park resurfacing. It adds that was even 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.
The report states: “A new tariff structure for charged car parks had been agreed as part of the car park strategy, with financial modelling showing that it should yield approximately £0.5 million in additional income based upon current usage patterns. However, implementation of the new tariffs have been delayed pending the outcome of efforts to ensure legislative support.
“Officers are currently actively working on options to move forward in that regard, and a further report will be brought to the council on that subject as soon as possible. When new tariffs could be introduced, the projected additional income will provide much needed additional funds to support an expansion of the annual capital programme for car park maintenance and enhancements.”
Councillors at the March Environment Committee meeting agreed to the recommended works, including line marking at various car parks across the borough, the resurfacing of Old Cross East, Newtownards, and “localised” repairs to Holborn Avenue Car Park in Bangor.
Councillors also agreed to an Alliance Party proposal to write to the Department for Infrastructure to “urge the implementation of promised legislative changes around the making and repealing of Car Park Orders.” Councillors believe the hold up in legislation means they cannot proceed with their car park strategy.
However at the full meeting of the council at Bangor Castle this week, 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.
“As members know, we have through good management in the council built up greater reserves than we have in the past, and that is something we need to sustain. However, in the short term it provides us with an opportunity to look at funding investment in our car park estate, until we are in a position to implement the strategy we have previously agreed.”
DUP Alderman Stephen McIlveen said: “The devil will be in the details of this (proposal). We don’t have the details, and we are being asked to make a decision on it. There is no report mentioned here, there is a commitment for a plan of action.
“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.”
A council officer said: “I think the demand for funding that is there in relation to this is not of a one-off nature, it is of a recurring nature. So it may be that reserves aren’t the best option, and perhaps the council could consider what its long term view is on the level of funding it wishes to attribute, and that would have to be something that is a recurring cost within the budget.”
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. That is why we asked to write to the DfI to see if we could speed up these legislative changes, or at least get a timeline to know what we are doing.
“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.
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