Council dealing with backlog of street light repairs

Wirral Council has assigned additional workers to help deal with a backlog of street light repairs.

The local authority has recently received an increased number of reported faults to street lights in the borough.

As a result, the council’s highways contractor, BAM Nuttall, has brought in more electricians and introduced plans for weekend working to address the issue after council officers identified that an increased number of reports of defective lights were slowing down response times.

The council is currently in the process of writing to everyone who has reported a street light being out and advising them that, while their report is not likely to be investigated within the five-day target at present, action is being taken to deal with delays.

Cllr Stuart Whittingham, cabinet member for highways and transportation, said: “We are committed to keeping all street lights in the borough operational. Indeed, we are currently investing in replacing our most inefficient and expensive street lights with new LED units and introducing a new central management system which will give us greater control over lights and also automatically identify faults, which means they can be repaired faster.

“We have a very successful partnership with BAM Nuttall to assist us with all aspects of highway maintenance but recently we noticed that the demand was impacting on their ability to meet response times on street lighting. We asked them to take action to address this and they are doing so. I’d just ask people to be patient while they put in the necessary arrangements to deal with the current backlog, while still moving forward with helping us implement our new street lighting strategy.”