To ask the Minister for Infrastructure whether there are incidents when road defects reported through the NI Direct reporting tool are deleted without action being taken.

My department receives a high volume of surface defect enquiries, such as potholes, and regrettably it is not possible to investigate all of these, and therefore many are dealt with during the next planned routine inspection of the area. During an ad-hoc investigation of a reported defect, repair work is also only carried out subject to a defect meeting our current intervention levels set out in the ‘Limited Service’ policy, (see Director of Engineering memorandum ‘Road maintenance standards for safety – limited service': https://www.infrastructure-ni.gov.uk/articles/network-maintenance). Defects that meet the intervention level will be updated with a repair and added to a contractor works programme with other work. Should a reported defect not meet the intervention level, is a duplicate, or is already repaired following a recent safety inspection of the area, then this is updated with a no further action (NFA) description.

Customers can obtain an update on an individual reported defect by entering the enquiry reference number into the Track-a-fault facility on the NI Direct website. https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/services/track-progress-reported-road-fault-or-issue.

You can upload pothole enquiries on the following Open Data NI website link: https://www.opendatani.gov.uk/@transportni/pothole-enquiries.