A ‘BIRTHDAY’ party has been held in Shaldon to mark two years of the village’s not so ‘temporary’ traffic lights.

Fed up parish councillors organised the event, complete with anniversary cake with candles, as a tongue-in-cheek way of highlighting the ‘disgraceful’ length of time they have been in place.

The two-way lights first went up in February 2024 following a landslip on an embankment between Ringmore Road and the A379.

But two years on, the wall has still not been repaired and its condition continues to deteriorate.

A Freedom of Information request in November last year revealed the highways authority Devon County Council had spent more than £43,000 on the set of lights to manage the wall collapse.

A spokesman for the parish council said it was ‘very much a tongue in cheek “celebration” organised by Shaldon Parish Council with the help of our County Councillor, Heather Horner, to highlight the very long time it is taking to resolve the issue of the embankment collapse at the junction of Ringmore Road and Torquay Road in Shaldon.

‘The delay in resolving this has resulted in temporary traffic lights being in place there for a whopping two years.’

Invitations were sent to the director responsible for transport at Devon County Council, the Chief Executive of DCC and the Member for Highways to the “party”.

However none attended.

Cllr Horner said she was disappointment at their non-attendance, and said that she had been given assurances by Devon County Council late last year that the road would be repaired.

She said this has since been followed with ‘silence’ and nothing had actually been done to fix it.

The parish council spokesman added: ‘Shaldon Parish Council had hoped that those responsible at Devon County Council would take the opportunity to come to Shaldon and listen to councillors’ concerns about the long delay in carrying out the road repairs and the impact of the long-running temporary traffic lights on the environment and on local residents and businesses.

‘We would, of course, very much like to be given a firm timetable for when the work to fix the embankment will finally be done and the lights removed.’

Parish council chairman Cllr Danielle Westlake, said she understood that the costs of having the temporary traffic lights in place for two years had now risen to well over £50,000.

She also pointed out that this amount of money would have gone a long way towards covering the cost of the repairs themselves.

Devon County Council has said previously that discussions with the landowner are continuing and, for the meantime, traffic management will remain in place.

One resident said: ‘I personally think it’s a disgrace the amount of money being spent on these traffic lights and the reluctance of the council to do anything about it.’