AN MP is urging council bosses to keep residents and drivers safe and fix more than 1,000 broken streetlights across the Shipley constituency.
Shipley MP Philip Davies said many roads were pitch black and drivers were forced to drive with full beam lights on to compensate for the outage. He said residents had also expressed concerns over safety walking alone around the roads when it is dark.
According to information in a council briefing paper there are more than 1,000 lights out of use across the constituency.
Mr Davies said: “We need to do everything we can to keep people safe and make sure they feel safe, whether that be pedestrians or drivers. In the most rural parts of the constituency a light being out can plunge the whole area into darkness. There is not the ambient lighting that is around in city centres from shops or restaurants. There are large swathes of roads where it is completely dark and so drivers understandably are using full beam lights to see where they are going, which could in turn create a hazard for other drivers if the lights are not dimmed in time.
“There is also the issue of safety for people out walking, many of whom have told me they feel unsafe.”
Mr Davies said while he accepted there would always be some lights that were out of order while waiting to be fixed, he would expect that number to be a handful not more than 1,000 in his constituency alone.
He added: “Recently the Labour Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime in West Yorkshire said ‘the streets are now less safe for women than they ever have been’. I would suggest her Labour colleagues at Bradford Council take note of what she said and act. I would suggest something as basic as street lighting would help make everyone feel a lot safer.”
A breakdown shows there are currently 160 faults in Baildon, 249 in Bingley, 206 in Bingley Rural, 177 in Shipley, 107 in Wharfedale and 140 in Windhill and Wrose. Some areas in the Shipley constituency have three times more lights out than parts of Bradford with Tong reporting 76 lights as broken and Bradford Moor 86.
Of the 30 council wards across the Bradford district, 28 are listed as having broken lights, only City Ward in Bradford West and Wibsey Ward in Bradford South are not featured.