Councillor Robin Parker campaigns to help resolve ongoing street lighting issue.

1.30.00pm GMT Tue 13th Jan 2009

In a letter to the Comet newspaper, documented in full below, County & Borough Councillor Robin Parker documents the issue of street lighting through to its conclusion.

Dear Sir,

You reported some weeks ago about the large number of street, roundabout and direction sign lights which were out for a long period of time along Gresley Way either side of the former Dixons site-apparently due to a contractor cutting a cable- and causing a major road safety hazard,

I reported these (as did others) many times to the system used by Herts Highways and was told that the repair was for the electricity company EDF to do and that the delay was with them.

Not wishing the dangerous conditions to continue over the busy Christmas/New Year period and annoyed at the lack of action, I telephoned EDF myself to explain the situation to them, just before Christmas. Within less than 24 hours they had supplied a temporary generator for most of the lights, pending a permanent repair. Furthermore, their manager told me that they were unaware of the problem until I informed them.

I would like to thank EDF for promptly supplying the generator in response to my call. However I will also be investigating why apparently Herts Highways and EDF did not liaise over this, despite my many reports to Herts Highways. It is fact an important issue because EDF have to contract to repair many street lights cable faults (of which there are many) and I notice that many locations suffer from delays in this respect.

Yours sincerely

Robin Parker