Council slammed over ‘the most useless street light in the country’

Residents raised their concerns with a street light in Inglewood, Darton, which is now surrounded by trees and the weed, practically making it invisible.

However the council did not support their petition (signed by 65-plus people) to move it, the cabinet heard.

In a support document, they stated the estimated cost would be £20,000.

They said: “To achieve the requested relocation of the lighting column, the energy supplier (Northern Power Grid), has requested a new supply cable to comply with current regulations. Together with the replacement column and lantern, the estimated cost last year was c£20k, but given the current rate of inflation, this is likely to increase.”

Cllr Dickie Denton (Darton East, Liberal Democrats) said people just didn’t feel safe in the area – especially during the winter months when it’s already dark in the afternoon.

He said: “I think we should enter a competition for the most useless streetlight in the country.

“The streetlight was put over there (next to the path) and all these trees have just grown up. So we’ve got this whole footpath which is completely unlit. There is no streetlight at all.

“The residents raised it with me and I’ve been petitioning the council for over a year now to do something about it – and they’re telling me they haven’t got the fund despite spending millions in the town centre.

“They (the council) described this as an ‘enhancement’. This is not a streetlight enhancement. The streetlight is already there so they deemed it necessary in the first place to put it there for safety but they don’t deem it necessary to move it.

“We’ve got a rise in crime. I just don’t want to be doing an interview with you in six months’ time in the winter saying ‘I told you so’.”

Cllr James Higginbottom, a Cabinet spokesperson for Environment and Highways, told the Local Democracy Service: “As a local Highway Authority, we receive an allocation of funding for the maintenance of street lighting located in the adopted highway.

“The street light referred to in the petition is located on a footpath which is not part of the adopted highway network and therefore cannot be maintained at public expense.

“It can still be moved, and we can work with Northern Power Grid to deliver that process, but the funding would need to come from a budget that has not already been earmarked for work on the adopted highway, such as Area Council funding.”