Wirral man sends photos of 6,000 broken street lights to council

Simon Jiang complained about thousands of street lights

A man who sent more than 6,000 photographs of faulty street lights to his local council has insisted he is not a "vexatious complainant".

Simon Jiang, of Wallasey, said he had written 350 emails to Wirral Council to highlight problems with lighting.

Mr Jiang said he even fell off his bike due to "absolute darkness" in one poorly lit street this year.

A council spokesman thanked him for his "diligence" and pledged to spend £10m upgrading thousands of street lights.

The local authority has started repairing 9,000 streetlights and said it would, as part of a two-year-programme that began in September, upgrade a further 26,000.

'Supernova levels'

"To them I am just a 'vexatious complainant'," Mr Jiang told the Local Democracy Reporting Service. "But I am [simply] demanding to know what is going on and what their reasons are for why they cannot deliver what we should rightfully expect of them in return for our taxes."

Mr Jiang claimed the problem had "exploded to almost supernova levels" in recent years.

"We're looking at almost 400 lights which have not been repaired since first logged in May 2016," he said.

A council spokesperson added: "In recent years, limited financial resources have made it challenging to sustain the demand placed on our street lighting.

"We'd like to reassure residents that reports of broken lights are dealt with by staff as quickly as possible, and more than 60 streetlight repairs are now carried out each day."