Decisions on whether five Belfast streets will get Irish language road signs have been deferred after a dispute over how resident support for the signs is calculated.

Belfast City Council policy requires that at least 15% of residents on a street back dual-language signs before they can be erected. Sinn Féin argues the 15% threshold should be based only on those who respond to surveys, not all residents of the street.

At a committee meeting this week, the party proposed approving three streets that failed to reach the 15% level under current rules. It also asked that two other streets be delayed and potentially recalculated under its own interpretation of the survey results.

On Willowfield Gardens in east Belfast, 8.7% of all residents support Irish signs, while 44.9% oppose them. If only respondents are counted, that changes to 15.7% support. Two streets in west Belfast received too few replies to meet the threshold but all respondents supported the signs. On Pilot Street in Sailortown, 10 out of 92 people replied, with one objector.

Sinn Féin group leader Ciaran Beattie said the two west Belfast streets had “100% support” among those who replied and described the current calculation method as flawed. He suggested that legal advice be sought on which interpretation is correct, with an opinion expected in August.

DUP group leader Sarah Bunting said the proposal would effectively rewrite council policy and noted that one of the streets Sinn Féin wanted approved had an objector. She described the approach as unreasonable and said a review of the policy is already due.

The committee voted by a single vote to postpone decisions on all five streets until after a review of the dual-language signs system is delivered later in the summer.