MP wins support of BT in campaign to protect rural street lights

As a result of a Parliamentary motion submitted by Tim Farron, BT's national office have contacted Tim to say that they will not be removing council street lights from their poles.

In a letter from their national Government relations chief, BT promised Tim that BT would not remove street lights from existing poles and that "...in instances where any council street lighting is located on a shared pole which becomes defective, we would re-attach any existing streetlight to the new pole."

Tim has thanked BT for their positive response, which means that many local street lights will now be protected. However, BT's decision now puts the focus back on Electricity North West who now stand isolated as the only utility company still planning to plunge rural communities into darkness.

Tim said: "I am really grateful to BT for their common sense approach to this issue. This is a very big success in our campaign to protect street lighting in our rural communities - removing street lamps from shared poles would be extremely dangerous and extremely expensive for local tax-payers to replace.

"Now that BT have made this announcement, it is time for Electricity North West to follow their lead and agree to allow our councils to keep street lights on their poles too."