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Almost £60,000 paid out in street light injury claims last year

The issue of faulty street lights is not a new one although claims for compensation are rising. Picture by Cliff Donaldson 
The issue of faulty street lights is not a new one although claims for compensation are rising. Picture by Cliff Donaldson  The issue of faulty street lights is not a new one although claims for compensation are rising. Picture by Cliff Donaldson 

ALMOST £60,000 was paid out in compensation last year for injuries caused by defective street lighting.

Personal injury claims relating to deficient or non-existent street lighting in the north are on the rise and last year 16 claims resulted in £59,000 being paid out by the Department of Infrastructure.

Just two years ago only £3,500 was awarded for a total of six claims - a 15-fold increase in expenditure.

The figures released by Infrastructure minister Chris Hazzard show that three times the compensation was paid out in 2015/16 compared to the previous year's total (£19m). The number of claims also rose slightly.

The minister said that the figures account for "instances where defective street lighting is alleged to be the main cause of the injury sustained".

He admitted there may be further costs inccurred by the department, which are not recorded.

"There may be other personal injury claims where defective street lighting is a contributory factor, it is not possible to identify these claims from the Department’s database," he added.

The information was released following an Assembly question from East Belfast UUP MLA Andy Allen.

Earlier this week £1m was allocated to the Department of Infrastructure for investment in LED street lighting as part of the October monitoring round, while back in June the department was allocated an additional £0.5m in on top of the initial £1 million budget set out for routine street lighting maintenance in 2016-17.

Speaking in June the minister said the department had received reports of 48,000 street light outages over the preceding 12 months, of which 42,500 had already been repaired.