Public street lighting

We said we would run a pilot with a Local Authority to reconnect knocked down street lights within a target of 10-working days.

Following feedback from our Local Authority and Public Lighting Authority (PLA) contacts, we gave a commitment in our 2016/17 ICE work plan to work with Kirklees Council to demonstrate how we can work closely together and coordinate our resources. We wanted to understand whether when streetlights are knocked down and the council to attend site and replace the lamp, Northern Powergrid could attend at the same time to re-service the lamp.

We carried out a five month trial with Kirklees Council between July and November 2016. This trial aimed to improve the turnaround of accidently damaged or knocked down street lamp columns, resulting in cost benefits and improved customer service. The scope of the trial included all ‘knocked down’ columns reported during normal weekday working hours and we aimed to deliver same day column replacement and connection.

During the trial, there were 26 reported instances of public street lighting columns being knocked down or damaged in the Kirklees area; 14 of which were reported outside normal working hours and as Kirklees Council were unable to facilitate an out of hour’s resource these were unable to be included in the trial. Two knocked down columns within the scope of the trial were successfully replaced and connected on the same day. For the remaining ten, Kirklees Council were unable to facilitate the same day column replacement due to resource constraints. However, through the work that we managed to complete we proved that with the correct levels of resource it is possible for us to work together with street lighting authorities to significantly improve ‘knock down’ replacement performance. Although Kirklees Council have decided not to progress the trial into business-as-usual operations we now continue to work together to prioritise delivery timescales following road traffic accidents.

We have gained valuable experience from operating the trial and we continue to be available to Local Authorities to develop this process further should they require it in the future.