A CALL for urgent action has been made after it was revealed more than 2,200 street lights in Wirral are broken.

Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have written to the town hall’s highways chief telling him to get a move on with repairs.

The council admitted it has not been able to "keep on top of demand"  due to financial problems - but said it will be spending more than £500,000 on fixing the lamps over the next year.

Wallasey councillor Lesley Rennie said one street light in her ward at Mount Road has been out of order for three years.

She said: “Residents have waited long enough – how many cabinet members does it take to change a light bulb?

“It is creating a danger as some of the broken lamps are on busy traffic junctions while others are on school routes.”

Liberal Democrat group leader Cllr Phil Gilchrist is also putting the pressure on: “There are a number of street lights off in my community of Eastham.

“There’s one I have been chasing since last October.

“The council’s online reporting system is not easy for the public to follow.

"It - along with the lights - needs fixing.”

Highways cabinet member Cllr Stuart Whittingham said 2,245 lights are currently out action for reasons including vandalism and cable faults - 100 are being repaired each week.

He said: “We know residents get frustrated when they report a defective street light near their home but don’t see it repaired as quickly as they would like.

“In many cases this is because the repair is not as straightforward as just changing a lamp or a fuse.

“Often there are issues with the power supplied to the column, which is beyond the council’s control, but equally as often it is that the whole column itself is old, out-of-date and needs to be replaced.”

He continued: “We recognise the capital budget for street lighting has not enabled us to keep on top of the demand for this work, which is why for 2017-18 we are proposing to invest more than eight times as much in bringing the network of columns up to date.

“This is at a time when we are also carrying out a detailed value for money assessment of the whole network to investigate whether we want to replace the remaining 28,500 street lights with LED units.

“Modernising the lighting network of course will mean fewer routine repairs and maintenance will be needed in years to come."