VILLAGERS have complained that only five street lights in their community are actually working.

Admittedly there are only nine street lights in the whole of Elsfield, but for Nich Butler that makes it all the more astonishing that they can't be fixed.

Mr Butler, who takes his dog Sukey out for a walk every night through the village, has been waiting nearly two months for those four lights to be fixed.

He emailed the street lighting team at Oxfordshire County Council on December 3 about the problem, and also mentioned that a fifth street light was so covered in foliage it might as well be broken.

Since then, he hasn't heard a word.

He said: "It's a bit of a pain really – there's one light for each sleeping policeman in the village and they warn people that they're there.

"It's important for me because I do a last walk at night with my dog and it's awfully useful to have street lights to illuminate the ground."

Mr Butler contacted the Oxford Mail after he saw an article about residents in Wantage who had a similar problem.

Neighbours in three streets in Charlton Heights made an official complaint to Oxfordshire County Council about their lights not working on December 11.

A month later, as we reported, the lights were still not working.

By a happy coincidence, the very day we published the article the repair team from SSE – the council's contractor – popped out and fixed the fault in a few hours.

The residents in Elsfield, just north east of Oxford near Marston, have been waiting even longer than that.

Mr Butler first emailed the county lighting team on November 30 to say three lights were not working, but he emailed them again on December 3 to say that in fact four were out and one was covered in foliage.

But, he said, some of the lights have been out for longer than that.

He said: "It was weeks and weeks and weeks – I would say it's been several months that some of them have not been working, but of course then you notice even more aren't working."

Oxfordshire County Council takes all complaints for broken street lights and passes them onto its contractor.

Depending on exactly what the problem is, it is either dealt with by Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN) or SSE Enterprise.

Or, in this case it seems, neither.

The Oxford Mail contacted both Oxfordshire County Council and SSE for a response but did not receive an answer from either by the deadline we gave.