Street lights switched back on at notorious Barnoldswick accident blackspot (From Burnley and Pendle Citizen)

Street lights switched back on at notorious Barnoldswick accident blackspot

9:00pm Monday 12th November 2012 in News

Kelbrook Road

POWER is set to be restored to street lights on a notorious accident blackspot in the next few days.

Barnoldswick councillor David Whipp hit out at Lancashire County Council and the power companies for failing to repair scores of unlit street lights along Kelbrook Road and the adjacent road at Higher Park.

Coun Whipp said: “These lights have been unlit since last April.

“It’s six months since the fault was reported but this dangerous stretch remains in darkness.

“Over the years, this section of road has seen some terrible crashes and more than its fair share of fatalities. It’s criminal that the lights are still off – after the months that they’ve known about it.

“I’m told that it’s an electrical fault and that Yorkshire Electric have to come and fixed it, but it’s ridiculous that this job hasn’t been done before now.

“Now that the clocks have gone back, this busy, badly-lit road is a death trap. I’m demanding immediate action to get the lights back on.

“The county council should be ashamed it has allowed this to drag on for so long.”

Jeff Lewis, principal street lighting engineer at Lancashire County Council, said: “We’re aware of people’s concerns about the issues affecting the electricity supply to streetlights in this area and if it was in the county council’s power to fix the problem we would have done so much earlier.

“However, the connections are the responsibility of Northern Power Grid alone and we’ve been doing all we possibly can to work with them over recent months to address the issue.

“The utility company have been on site this week and we are pleased that power to some of the lights has now been restored.

“We expect power issues with the other lights will be resolved in the next few days.”