A FERMANAGH MLA, who is herself living in an unadopted estate, is driving legislation to help address the persistent issue of unadopted estates.
Hundreds of homes across Fermanagh are within developments that either remain or have become ‘unadopted’ over recent years. Now, MLA Deborah Erskine has announced the launch of a public consultation aimed at gathering insights and solutions from residents.
This initiative seeks to tackle the frustrations stemming from poor road surfaces, sewerage issues, and overall estate management concerns which have long plagued neighbourhoods.
“I’m bringing forward a piece of legislation at the NI Assembly to tackle the annoyance of unadopted developments in NI,” Ms Erskine, who is all to familiar with the issue, explained.
“As part of that process I have now launched my public consultation and I need your (the public) views to help me sort out and tackle the issue head on.
“We need departments and agencies to take ownership over developments that have been left to unadopted standard which means the roads, the water, and the sewage treatment as well as street lights have been left in a poor state.”
An unadopted estate is one where its developer has left it without ensuring it meets the necessary standards for adoption by the statutory agencies, such as regarding roads and sewerage systems.
If the development is not adopted, agencies such as NI Water and the Department for Infrastructure (DfI) Roads section are not responsible for maintenance or repair.
While developers usually leave a bond in place that is supposed to cover the cost of any work needed to bring the estate up to standard, very often the situation drags on for so long without resolution that bond amount is no longer sufficient to cover this work.
In some cases, residents end up having to cover the additional costs themselves.
“This is unacceptable for homeowners across Northern Ireland and I am one of those homeowners as well, so I want to help in regards to the situation,” Deborah added.
“I need your views to do so, you can feed your views through to my public consultation. It wont take long, and if you could by Friday September 26 by 5pm.”
You can find the consultation online; https://forms.gle/6zCk3zRfTsKNqTb88