Parent’s anger over pitch lights delay
‘AN ABSOLUTE joke’ was how one Caol parent described the on-going situation at the village’s new five-a-side football pitch.
Caol and Mallaig councillor Ben Thompson contacted The
Oban Times after receiving numerous complaints about lights at the pitch not working.
The parent, who asked not to be named, said: ‘This problem with the lights has been going on for about five months. It’s a farce because the kids can’t go out and play now that we are in winter and it’s dark early.’
Mr Thompson feared if the situation was not resolved soon it might put people off getting involved in community activities, saying: ‘ We should be encouraging people in the community to organise activities.’
A Highland Council spokesperson said: ‘The new lighting for the community pitch operates on the same principal as the previous lights in that the lighting switches off at a pre- determined time every evening. The new lights have an additional push-button feature which activates the lights for 30- 45mins at a time ensuring the lights are not left on un-necessarily when not in use. When initially installed, everything was working as designed apart from the lights still going on after the 10pm shut down time when the push button was activated. This was traced to a fault in the timeclock and a replacement was installed.
‘Shortly after this, the replacement timeclock developed a similar problem and to minimise disturbance to neighbouring properties from the lights being activated in the early hours of the morning, the lights were switched off until a further replacement could be sourced.
‘ We have been given assurance from the contractors that an engineer will visit Caol this afternoon (Tuesday February 7) to fit a new controller.’