Road injury claims cost Stormont nearly £10m since 2011

By Louise Small and Damien Edgar

The Department of Infrastructure, formerly the DRD, has paid out almost £10m since 2011 to people injured on the roads.

According to figures obtained by UTV, the newly restructured department has paid out £9.82m since 1 Jan 2011.

The breakdown of money paid out for personal injury claims was as follows:

The compensation was granted for injuries caused on the roads and pavements of NI.

In the same period, there were around 4,000 claims submitted as personal injury claims, with 628 of those relating to potholes.

The figures are revealed after traffic chaos was caused in Belfast on Bank Holiday Monday after part of the Malone Road subsided.

The amount spent by the department on vehicle damage compensation claims was around a tenth of the amount for personal injuries, sitting at just over £1m.

The department has spent over £77m in the past few years patching carriageways, to address problems ranging from potholes to resurfacing issues.

Newry was the city with the highest number of claims for vehicle damage compensation, sitting at twice the amount of claims as the second nearest location, Lisburn, in the past five years.

There has been a steady reduction in the amount spent on carriageway patching since 2011, with almost £4m less being spent last year.

A fall of almost £4m carriageway patching spending between 2013/14 and 2014/15 correlated with the highest amount of personal injury claim pay-outs in the five year period (£2.2m).

The reduction in funding last year also saw £56k more being paid out in vehicle damage claims, although there was less paid out for personal injury claims.