To ask the Minister for Infrastructure (i) to detail the number of (a) road; and (b) lane closure approvals that have been issued retrospectively by his Department in the last 12 months; and (ii) to detail the proportion of total approved (a) road; and (b) lane closures within that period that were issued retrospectively.

My Department process over 22,000 road restrictions application each year from a range of stakeholders. Article 7 of the Road Traffic Regulation (NI) Order 1997 stipulates that the Department may give authorisation to restrict or prohibit the temporary use of a road by traffic. It is illegal for a road to be obstructed without my Department’s authorisation, with the exception of emergencies, or, for under a 15 minute duration.

In principle, approvals should be sought and approved before an obstruction is put in place on a road. However, there can be a small number of instances when retrospective approvals are granted. Such examples include, a follow-up approval after an urgent verbal request by a stakeholder requiring a restriction to be put in place, or, a late notification seeking an extension to an existing closure.

Since 1 April 2024, my Department has implemented a new online application process that allows such information to be extracted. Regrettably, it has not been practical to undertake a manual check of applications before April 2024 due to the volume of applications held in a manual system. However, I can advise that between 1 April to 16 December there were 15,401 approved applications of which 445 (2.9%) were retrospective approvals. The table below splits these between road and lane closures.

I would also advise that the enforcement of temporary road restrictions is the responsibility of the PSNI.