The new DoI Minister has said it doesn’t have the money needed to complete the final section of resurfacing work in a estate in the south of the island.
Jason Moorhouse (Arbory, Castletown and Malew) quizzed Dr Michelle Haywood on the decision not to finish the work on the Ballacriy Park estate in Colby.
Dr Haywood, who famously planted flowers in Port St Mary’s damaged roads, told him that “based on its condition, the road will be reinstated half width as per the agreement made between Manx utilities and the department”.
She added: “The surface in this area was assessed prior to the MUA works using the department’s prioritisation matrix.
“The Department does not have the resource or funding to undertake resurfacing of the whole estate Road, as the budget and program are all already allocated for the next two years.”
However, Mr Moorhouse criticised this saying it was an “opportunity missed” given that “well over 90 per cent of the estate has already been resurfaced in recent years”.
Dr Haywood told him that the benefit of relaying the road would not be worth the funding it would need as more widely used roads.
She said: “We just don’t have the budget to keep doing small estate roads when we need to focus on larger district, local and primary routes.”
This alarmed the Lib Vannin leader Lawrie Hooper (Ramsey) who warned that the lack of funding now would lead to bigger problems in the future.
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