An Aberdeen street was left without street lights for eight days as the council reportedly “lost” complaints from anxious residents.
Formartine Road in the Tillydrone area was left in the dark for over a week.
Despite members of the community and a councillor raising the issue, they say the council did not seem to record their complaints.
Amanda Hall has lived in Tillydrone for 30 years. After making a complaint to the council’s out-of-hours service on the evening of Tuesday, November 1, she heard nothing back.
Several others on the Tillydrone Community Facebook group have also reported the problem.
‘It seems Tillydrone is forgotten’
Mrs Hall said: “Everyone has received the same sort of generic email from Aberdeen City Council just saying that they’ll look into it.
“It’s quite scary. You’re not prepared to go out when it’s dark. You can’t see where you’re walking and there are potholes all over the place.
“It just seems like Tillydrone is totally forgotten. I think if you lived in the West End or something, they would be sorted really quickly.”
Due to the time of year, and the clocks going back at the end of October, it now gets dark around 5pm.
This means residents walking along the 350-yard road were left in total darkness.
Only after repeated complaints did the lights start working again on Wednesday, November 9 – eight days after they were first reported.
Aberdeen Council ‘loses complaint’
Tillydrone councillor Ross Grant was part of the campaign to get the lights fixed.
On Tuesday, he wrote on Facebook: “I have reported this last week and was assured it would be investigated urgently. I did a follow-up. Then I’m told tonight that they’ve lost the record of my complaint.”
He told the Press and Journal: “The visibility is very poor, and it feels unsettling to be down there.
“Some residents have expressed to me that they understandably feel unsafe and are avoiding going out at night and it is getting dark not long after nearby school pupils leave school for the day which is a cause for concern.
“I have approached senior officers to investigate why it has taken so long for the council to come out and sort the problem.”
Council does not respond
Aberdeen City Council was contacted by the Press & Journal on Tuesday but did not initially respond to requests to comment on the issue.
On Wednesday, they posted on Facebook they were aware of the fault and were working to fix it as soon as possible.
However, unusually, the council limited who could comment on the social media post. There were no comments on the post.
Council’s ‘wall of silence the worst part’
Mrs Hall believes that despite the lights getting fixed, it sets a dangerous precedent the council took so long to fix them.
She said: “If emergency services needed to access this area it would make their job a whole lot harder.
“It is awful we have had to get all kinds of people involved to get the council to address the issue.
“Half the battle is just getting them to explain what the problem is. This wall of silence has been the worst part.”
At 4pm on Thursday, a council spokeswoman said: “We needed to investigate to identify the exact location of the fault. The electrician has found the fault and has made a full repair.”
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