Street lighting update

Monday, 19 January 2015

Calderdale Council is looking at the future of street lights in the borough, to improve their condition, reliability and energy efficiency. And to make extensive repairs.

We were contacted by HebWeb reader who put in a complaint to Calderdale Council about the faulty street lighting on Keighley Road. Between Lee Mill Road and Pecket Well, most of the lights are out. He received a phone call to say "it could be a while before they are repaired as all of the electrical cabling on that stretch of road has been stolen!"

Calderdale Council say that they are looking to invest in lighting now to save money and repairs in the future. Many of our street lights are old and are not energy efficient. They invested an additional £1million in street lighting in residential areas in 2014/15, using an innovative 'sleeving' method to replace old street lighting columns and install LED lanterns which will reduce energy usage by nearly 60%. This will result in an annual saving of £15,500 in energy costs.

Calderdale say they are working hard to repair a number of faulty streetlights across the borough. Over the last few months there has been a high number of reports of faults, and over the busy Christmas period a backlog has built up. As of 6 January this year, there were 663 outstanding faults, accounting for 2.2% of our total of 30,500 lights.

Their contractor Amey has allocated additional staff to help, and say they hope to complete the repairs required by Saturday 7 February 2015. In addition, they will soon be undertaking a programme of bulk lamp changes during February which will reduce the number of faults due to old lamps.

Calderdale Council's Cabinet Member for Economy, Cllr Peter Caffrey, said, "I'd like to apologise to residents for the number of street lights currently not working and fully acknowledge that recently some faults on existing lights have not been cleared as quickly as I would have liked. I know however that teams are now working hard to complete these jobs as soon as possible.

"I know that street lighting is very important to residents, and it's essential that Calderdale Council invests in the future of our lights.

"By investing in our lighting now, it should help reduce the number of faults in the future, reduce energy costs and improve reliability."