Street lighting includes street lights, lights on pedestrian crossings and associated electrical equipment such as illuminated signs, bollards and Belisha beacons.
We generally have street lighting in urban areas. Countryside areas are not lit, except where there is a problem of night time road safety or issues of personal security.
How to report faulty street lights
Let us know about faults and street lighting failure using our report a faulty street light form.
Let us know if you come across any electrical safety issues. For example, where cables are exposed because of a broken inspection door, or where a lamp column has collapsed as a result of a traffic accident.
Emergency faults
Emergency faults, where there is risk to life or where people are in significant danger, should always be reported to the police by calling 999.
Timescales
Repairing an individual light is expensive. All reports are considered relative to the impact on public safety. Replacements are put into a programme to enable efficient route planning. In some cases, temporary traffic management is needed before the work can be undertaken.
Depending on the nature of the reported fault, repairs will be prioritised:
- urgent faults will be attended to immediately
- non-urgent faults will be attended to within 5 working days
- some repairs where cabling has been damaged, may take much longer to repair
Where repairs relate to electricity supply faults, the distribution network operator may be involved. These can be more difficult to repair as they may involve digging in the highway.
If the light has not been repaired after a month, let us know. We would normally expect such repairs to have been completed well within that time frame.
Responsibilities
Although we have no statutory duty to provide street lighting, we manage around 17,000 lighting units across the borough. With the support of our electrical contractor, we set out to maintain our electrical installations safely and efficiently.
Although we do have some privately owned electricity supply cables, the majority of our lighting stock is supplied by Scottish and Southern Energy, our current distribution network operator. This means that some underground cable faults are not under our direct control.
Maintenance
Inspections are carried out to identify and reduce faults, including night-time scouting to make sure that illuminated bollards and illuminated sign-lights are functioning. These are carried out monthly during the summer months and fortnightly during winter.