South road blocked by lamppost

The South Road was temporarily blocked this morning when a streetlight column blew down between the Tesco roundabout and Breiwick House.

The lamppost collapsed around 5.14am and roads engineers had the road reopened by 6.27am.

Roads executive manager Dave Coupe said that it was inevitable that street lights would deteriorate and collapse in time, but routine inspections led to most of the incipient failures being identified and cropped before they fell.

Mr Coupe added: “Big columns like that catch a lot of wind. They are regularly inspected and if they show signs of deterioration they are cut down – as we have done in various places. The biggest percentage are picked up by our inspection and replacement programme.”

He added that it could be difficult to spot corrosion leading to an internal failure and even lampposts that were good could deteriorate very quickly.