What We Do

Lighting

The County Council owns 50,810 Street Lights, 5,670 Illuminated Road Signs and Bollards plus 62 Zebra Crossings under the care of the Road Lighting Team.

Maintenance of these involves:

• cleaning and electrical/structural inspections once a year
• lamp changing between twice a year to every six years, depending on type, and
• patrolling every two weeks together with
• ad hoc repairs and
• planned replacements of decayed or obsolete units.

Emergency lighting and sign faults should be repaired within two hours and lamps out within five working days (except Central Networks cable faults which will depend on their response time).

Investment in the latest equipment and technology has increased lighting efficiency and reliability. The 2006/07 Performance Indicators show that the average repair time for a street lighting fault under the control of the local authority was 3.1 days.

Who designs the lighting?

The County Council not only maintains but also designs or approves consultants' designs and oversees the installation of adoptable lighting and illuminated traffic signs throughout the County.

We use the latest computer-aided design techniques and all schemes are designed in accordance with the British Standard for road lighting, BS EN 13201:2003. Lighting can be created which will enhance a conservation area, or light a main road to national standards, while limiting the amount of stray light to a minimum.

How much does it cost?

Here are some figures to give an idea of what is involved.

The total amount of electrical energy consumed is around 21,200,000 kilowatt hours (or units) per year, but the majority of street lights consume only 58 watts each and the energy conservation programme will continue to replace older inefficient types of lamp as budgets permit.

There are 100 patrol routes and the three patrollers cover over 51,000 miles a year in total. Around 310 streetlights have to be replaced each year, mainly as a result of damage caused by traffic accidents.

Vehicle damage and vandalism cost about £150,000 this year and the budget for 2006/07 is: -

This equates to about 1.6p a head per night to provide safety and security for the whole community. Lighting also provides savings in costs to society which are not easily quantified. However, it is known that effective street lighting reduces accidents after dark by 30%. The average total cost of a road traffic accident is £86,000. In 2003 there were 458 injury accidents after dark on Worcestershire's roads. It is also agreed that good lighting reduces the fear of crime and studies in problem estates in Dudley and Stoke-on-Trent showed reductions of up to a third in actual crime levels following the installation of improved street lighting.