The reason councils are not legally obliged to provide street lighting is purely for financial reasons: to avoid claims of negligence or failure to provide street lighting in the event a resident injures themselves under poor lighting due to broken lamps.
“Currently, it seems to me that councils may want it both ways, i.e., no responsibility in law for failing to maintain their lighting equipment, and then the facility to rebuff any potential claims should personal injury cases arise connected to the retro-fitting of non-safety tested, potentially hazardous 5G infrastructure,” Cardin says.
Paul Cardin is a former “sparker,” radio communication operator, for the Royal Navy, former local authority street lighting designer and resident of Wirral, Merseyside, UK.
There’s a crucial legal point here that I’ve never seen mentioned or covered anywhere else and I’ve been aware of it for a good few years.
All UK councils, no matter their size, have no duty to provide street lighting. So, all the lamp posts in all the streets in urban and rural locations everywhere in the UK are provided under a power. This was voluntarily taken up a long time ago, since well before I was born, anyway! The exercise of their power in this area serves them well financially because it helps them to outflank most legal claims where a loss or injury has been suffered due to faulty equipment.
Now, the important point to make is that given they have no duty in law to provide any lamp posts or associated equipment, then it would correspond that they have no duty to provide 5G facilities to customers when that 5G infrastructure is actually ATTACHED to these lamp posts. I believe they (elected AND unelected council officials) are therefore in NO position to complain that they MUST provide superfast broadband speeds to their residents – because there is no legal duty in existence requiring them do this.
Can Councils legally turn off the lights?