Back in early December 2010 I noticed that none of the street lamps along the North side of Magdalen Bridge was working.  This isn’t strictly in my ward but I cycle home that way every day and it’s still City Centre.  I saw a potential safety issue with cyclists having to pull out to turn right at the Plain and the risk of drivers of buses, cars, vans etc. not seeing them, especially if the cyclists were dressed in dark clothes and not using lights.  Sadly that still happens far more often than it should.  Many students also report feeling unsafe walking over the bridge and the darkness was not going to help that!

I made a report about the problem to the County Council street light repair service on 9th December. That service is normally excellent and things get repaired in a few days, almost always less than a week.  I got a response the same day saying a 24hr job had been raised.

On 13th December I got an update saying the street light repair contractors had attended and found a power supply fault so had passed the issue onto Scottish and Southern Energy the body responsible for dealing with such issues.  SSE is contracted to repair such faults in 20 working days.  I asked if this could be given priority as it affected so many lights and on 14th December the County Council said they would try to pull some strings.

On 12th January 2011 I reminded the County Council that the 20 working days were now up (count them yourself if you don’t believe me!).  Unusually I got no reply so sent a reminder on 17th January.  I got a reply quickly that said, among other things:

“Guaranteed Standards of Performance for street lighting cable fault repairs became a statutory requirement from 01 October 2010. We will therefore claim penalty payments from SSE at £10 a day, for every day over 20 working days the fault is outstanding.”

I was also given the contact details for a person at SSE and the job reference so I could complain directly.  I did so, as did the Bursar of a nearby College.  I got a “not me guv” type of reply yesterday helpfully giving the contact details of the Oxford Depot manager for SSE as well as the engineer dealing with the issue. But still no progress!

Earlier in the week, while I was dealing with the order for Cherwell Student Newspaper for our department I mentioned this issue to the person I was dealing with.  He passed it on to one of the Cherwell journalists who has today pursued SSE about the issue.  I think the word “journalist” must have worked better than the word “councillor” because the job has now magically been programmed!

I have had an email this afternoon from the County Council saying:

“I have been told by SSE that there is a major cable fault on the bridge, which will require a power shutdown affecting businesses in the area (such as Sainsbury’s). The work has been programmed for next Thursday to allow the relevant businesses to be informed.”

So there we are.  Some casework is easy, some takes ages and far too much chasing!  I am amused that a journalist managed to achieve, in about half an hour, more than I have achieved in a month with this issue! Well done Cherwell.  The £10/day fine for missing the service deadline does seem a rather paltry amount and is hardly going to make contractors take much notice of the20-day limit.  I wonder why it is set so low.

Watch out for working lights next Thursday (27th Jan)!  Update:  There is now an article in Cherwell about this.