Who looks after Street Lighting?
At one time the Parish Council owned and paid for the maintenance and power for all of the lights in the Parish but used the Borough Council as their Agents to do so.
Starting in 1993, when there was pressure to replace existing lighting which had 3 core wiring- principally to the Gough Cooper estate- the Parish Council, aided by grants from the Borough Council, replaced all of the streetlights in the built up part of the village with adoptable schemes. To be adopted the scheme had to meet County Council design criteria about lamp intervals, placing etc. and involved new columns (except for Francis Road). Once installed the new lamps were adopted by the County Council and were no longer a Parish Council responsibility. These adopted lights are periodically inspected by the County to identify where action is needed. The County have a set of criteria about speed of response with ‘Keep Left’ signage the highest, if a fault is discovered instant action is unlikely but the sooner a fault is reported hopefully the sooner it will be fixed. If the fault turns out to be concerned with the wiring a specialist is often called in, meaning a further delay before the repair is done.Some lights, however, do remain the responsibility of the Parish Council, namely those between the War Memorial and the Station, upgraded in 2003 to help walkers, and several isolated lamps along Mill Lane and Riding Lane and in the passageways. These lamps are maintained for the Parish Council by a Contractor.
To avoid confusion any fault discovered with ANY light should be reported to the Parish Clerk .