Wirral Council’s street light shame - years of inaction angers locals

Despite vows to solve the problem from senior councillors over many years, locals feel more unsafe than ever as the nights draw in.

In Wallasey, hundreds of lights are out and with people saying many of these have not been fixed for years.

Speaking about an alleyway in Seaview Road, Jan Stockham said: “I won’t go out in the dark as my property is over half way down and it’s pitch back, I feel there is a very high risk of assault so I avoid it in the dark.

“Five neighbours have rang the council over this light, as it’s the only one in the entry.

“There are eight flats along the entry and we have to walk down in the dark with risk every day. The dentist at 3 Hose Side Road has installed sensor lights so they can see but they shouldn’t have to!”

Rita Krummins is deeply upset about the broken lights on her street, Elleray Park Road, in Wallasey.

She said: “You can see the old style street light on the residential side which is not working and the last one looking up the street.

“So there are two lights on either side of the road at the top and the bottom and nothing in the middle.

“We had drug dealing in the park a while ago and personally I would like to see street lights along the path in the park too.”

Elleray Park Road in Wallasey

As winter arrives, these issues are only going to have more of an impact on people in the borough.

Helen Clinch, of Silverlea Avenue, Wallasey, said: “Unfortunately I leave home for work in the dark and return in the dark.”

Earlier this month, the LDRS reported the story of one man who went to extraordinary lengths to record the extent of the problem.

Over almost four years, he recorded the details of hundreds of broken street lights, taking photos of each one and annotating them meticulously.

The darkness they create can have serious consequences.

Last week, a coroner was told broken street lights played a significant role in the death of a young dad hit by a car in Birkenhead.

An inquest into the death of Wallasey man John Barker, 30, heard three out of four street lights covering the junction of Oxton Road and Exmouth Street, Birkenhead , were out when he was fatally injured on February 20 last year.

Daniel Davies, whose Rockpoint Leisure enterprise is investing huge sums of money to regenerate New Brighton, told the BBC broken street lights could harm his plans.

He said providing lighting was one of the most basic things a council can do.

Seaview Road

He also tweeted: “Light makes people feel safer, they are less likely to trip over and anti-social behaviour decreases.”

The issue exists across Wirral and is by no means just a Wallasey problem.

Commenting on Facebook, EJ Grainger said a number of street lights were broken where she lived in West Kirby.

The LDRS had reports of broken street lights from every corner of the borough, but the problem appears to be most concentrated in East Wirral, around Wallasey and Birkenhead.

It is a long-running saga.

Wirral Council’s many pledges

The issue of broken street lights moved up the political agenda in February 2015, after a Liberal Democrat councillor branded Wirral Council a ‘disgrace’ for their slow response on the issue.

The cabinet member responsible at the time, Labour councillor Stuart Whittingham, said: “We are currently investing in replacing our most inefficient and expensive street lights with new LED units,” that sentiment may be all too familiar to locals today.

Exactly a year later, Cllr Whittingham apologised for not dealing with the problem sooner and said the council will deal with it.

Later that year, Wirral Council announced it had used a special type of interest free loan (called Salix) to address the issue.

With the loan it replaced 7,000 of the borough’s worst energy performing lights with modern LED lamps.

Then, in October 2017, an article appeared on the council’s Wirral View website, stating a further 600 street lights were to be replaced with new LED lamps as part of an ongoing programme to modernise the borough’s street lights.

280 lighting columns would also be replaced as part of the work.

Again, the council admitted it had issues with how it manages the volume of reports about faulty street lights and the backlog of repairs.

Another year, another promise. In January 2018, Wirral Council said work to replace all 27,000 of its street lights will begin within weeks.

Cllr Whittingham proclaimed: “It is a huge commitment and one which I know residents will welcome.”

That commitment was bolstered a few months later in April, when the council’s then leader Phil Davies, said: “I will also be proposing to cabinet that we deploy £6m from our capital funds to take the opportunity to replace broken and damaged lamp-post columns at the same time.

“[I will also] make a further £750,000 available to repair bollards, damaged signs and other safety features.”

But that did not seem to do the trick either.

In a response to an LDRS article on this issue earlier in the month, Wirral Council said their two-year LED streetlight upgrade programme is currently in its second phase – aiming to replace 28,000 streetlights with LED bulbs by autumn 2021.

The spokesperson for the council, added: “We have [now] successfully bid for over £10 million of funding, which allowed us to start replacing 9,200 full streetlight columns in September.”

The spokesperson said that means more than 60 street lights are being repaired each day in Wirral.

Time will only tell if this latest pledge can ease the anguish of worried, frustrated locals, who have waited a long time for their concerns to be addressed.