Engineers are working through a backlog of street light repairs in Wirral.
It is now a month since Wirral Council put in place a special street light repair plan to tackle the volume of defective light reports that were recorded on the council’s systems, which at the time numbered around 1,800.
With the additional efforts put in over the last month, more than half these faults have now been repaired by the council’s contractor, BAM Nuttall.
Up to the end of February, engineers had dealt with 1,016 of the outstanding reports, meaning they are well on target to help the council keep its promise of having all outstanding reports addressed by the end of April.
Cllr Stuart Whittingham, cabinet member for transport and technology infrastructure, said: “I’m delighted with the progress that has been made so far on clearing the backlog. It’s been a tough time. We’d seen a higher than usual number of outstanding faults reported in, not helped by an increase in levels of vandalism and vehicle collisions.
“Our own officers were working hard to keep on top of the reports as they came in and prioritise them for repair based on their location and potential public safety implications, but it was clear that more needed to be done to reduce the number of defective lights, particularly those that had been outstanding for a long time.
“With the plan we put in place a month ago we were confident of getting on top of the outstanding reports as well as managing any new ones and it seems we are well on the way to wiping the slate clean by end of April. I’d like to thank everyone for their patience and understanding.”
Continuing alongside the regular repair schedule has been the programme to replace the old-fashioned street lighting units with brand new LED lights Wirral’s main roads. The last few remaining LED lights are now scheduled for installation and this phase of the programme will come to a close at the end of March.
Cllr Whittingham added: “We’ve known for a long time that we have an old, largely inefficient street lighting network and we are constantly trying to make improvements.
“Our investment in the LED programme is testament to that. These units will save us money in the long-run and also contribute to our environmental targets. They can be managed centrally and any defects on these units are automatically logged on the central system.
“We are now looking at ways in which we might be able to extend the network of LED lights in Wirral even further.”