IN response to Mrs Pinder's letter "At least get the lights to work" (April 30), it is worth setting out the facts on City of York Council's approach to traffic light maintenance.

We are responsible for 8,500 bulbs within traffic lights and each bulb is replaced every six months. This proactive approach ensures we keep blown bulbs to the minimum but despite this we still experience around 10-15 faults of all types each week.

Urgent faults are attended within three hours and non urgent faults are normally dealt with the next working day.

Occasionally there are serious faults such as those at Clifton Green in February which can take some time to diagnose and fix and we then need to put in temporary measures.

Faults are picked up by our computer system but can also be reported on 01904 611208 24 hours a day seven days a week.

Bill Woolley,

Acting director,

Environment and development services,

City of York Council,

St Leonards Place,

York.

Updated: 09:43 Saturday, May 07, 2005