STREET lighting in Warrington is heading for a potential crisis – with the borough council facing the possibility of having to switch off half its 27,697 street lamps.
Current spending on street lighting energy is more than £1.4 million – representing 17 per cent of the borough council’s energy costs – and within five years it is expected to soar to £2.4 million.
In addition, 61 per cent of lighting columns are 25 years old or older and 36 per cent are older than 40 years.
Average life of column is 25-30 years.
This means about 17,000 columns are in need of replacement, with 10,000 at high risk of failure.
The stark facts are revealed in a report to be presented to Town Hall chief by Cllr Linda Dirir (right), executive member for highways, transport and climate change.
Basic cost of replacing a lighting column is £950 which means the cost of replacing all 17,000 aging columns is £16 million.
Replacing 10,000 high risk columns would cost £9 million.
Current budget provision would allow an average of 500 columns a year to be replaced
Street lighting also accounts for 17 per cent of the council’s carbon emissions.
The report points out that the council has no statutory duty to provide street lighting, the original purpose of which was to prevent crime.
It was unrelated to highway safety – however it is recognised that it does contribute to road and community safety.
Members of the executive board are being recommended to borrow £34 million as an “invest to save” scheme to replace and upgrade 22,000 columns and lanterns with more modern energy efficient types, to be delivered over three years from 2014-15.
11 Comments
if it aint broke dont fix it?
I suppose the Council hasn’t heard of the concept of ‘planned maintenance and replacement’.
turning off every other street light (where they were say every 50M)would make no real difference to safety – but it would to cost.
As regards road safety:-
If walkers,joggers & cyclists wore high vis/bright clothing then they would be noticed easier.
A lot of homes now have sensors to operate their own security lights than they used to – to deter burglars.
What cost to reduce the lux level of street lights- do they have to be so bright??
Like on football pitches- have two lights on one column – save on replacing all the columns?
I’m sure WBC have thought of all these things – have they??
Just remember that it is we who elect these incompetents.
We need to copy Sheffields street lighting plan they are currently replacing all there lighting stock with LED lights which are allot cheaper to run and there is no light pollution, invest to save !
having actually taken the time to read the report it is clear that ….
a- the problems are an aspect of being a new town – lots of new lamps put in 30 years or so ago.
b- the current lamps are not capable of being switched off, or dimmed etc (I guess the tecnology wasn’t available 30 years ago!)
c- two ligts on one column (graplad) sounds a good idea, although the existing columns would still need de-commissioning.
d- the proposals will actually save money and help the environment.
its easy to slag off our council by just repsonding to press snippits…if you take the time to read what they are doing fully it makes much more sense.
ANY lamp is capable of being switched off. Remove bulb – lamp is off!!!
If over a third of all lamp columns are considered to be “at high risk of failure” just because they are over 25-30 years old, how many of these 10,000 columns actually HAVE failed in some way? If it’s less than about 100 per year (ie. less than 1% of those considered at high risk) – and I’m sure it’s FAR less than that – then obviously the arbitrary 25-30 year lifespan limit is way too short.
We might actually get to see some more stars.
Our Council are being asked to “borrow” £34m and we will then have to pay the interest charges. Why do we always have to pick up the tab for these incompetents?
A much fairer way would be to maintain annually the 500 columns suggested as being in the budget without any need to switch off anything. We could of course go back to the Victoria age with gas lighting employing a person to light each column. That might even be comnsidered progress. Once again our Council are found wanting. The elected Members sit in their ivory towers drawing their allowances without any understanding of the real world.
If you read the article, the interest paid is less than the energy savings