Villagers see red over temporary traffic lights

The lights were put in place after a landslide, but have now been concreted into the ground.

Residents in the village of Mickleton, in Teesdale, County Durham, are seeing red after waiting for the lights to change more than two million times since they were installed.

Durham County Council says it would cost £100,000 to widen the road - but it has already spent £44,000 on the hire and maintenance of the lights.

The problem started after a landslip narrowed the B6281 road between the villages of Mickleton and Eggleston, near the River Tees.

Durham County Council installed the lights on March 22, 1996, as a temporary measure to allow cars to pass on the narrow road.

But six years later - long after the landslide problem was solved - the lights are still in place, leaving residents furious and frustrated.

Moss Anderson, 64, a retired village shop owner, said: "It's so frustrating. I must have wasted days of my life waiting at those lights.

"Everything we have done to try to get the council to do something has just fallen on deaf ears."

The lights have been in place for 2,238 days and the lights have changed more than 2.2m times since they were installed. A person making a return journey along the road, five times a week, could have spent a total of 73 hours waiting at the lights.

The council says it has not got the cash to carry out the work, despite having already paid out £6,000 a year for the hire of the lights and £20,000 two years ago to buy them outright.

A spokesman said: "From consultations it is clear that local opinion is against permanent traffic lights, or a one-way system, and the only other option is road realignment, which is the most expensive, and at present the money is just not available.

"At the moment our budget does not allow us to spend £100,000 to repair that, particularly when money is needed elsewhere.

"The lights change very quickly. It's a very minor road and the traffic hardly has to wait at all.