Upgrade of 16,000 Northumberland street light columns and 29,000 lanterns set for completion two years behind schedule

The street-lighting modernisation project originally set out to replace 16,000 entire columns and another 29,000 lanterns in the county with new LED technology, in order to save energy and money.

At a meeting of Northumberland County Council’s communities and place committee on Wednesday, March 4, head of technical services David Laux presented an update on what he described as ‘one of the most difficult projects I have ever been involved with’.

It started on site in March 2015, initially with an expected completion date of February 2018, but the contract with Galliford Try is now due to be completed this month.

However, there will be a 12-month defects correction period and some of the lighting installations have been taken back under council control during the contract, including some decorative/heritage lighting and the refurbishment of subway lighting, some of which is still to be completed.

The report revealed that by the end of 2019, the contract works were 99.95% completed with more than 26,500 lantern changes completed and more than 18,000 new columns installed.

Mr Laux explained that the problems included the initial designs, which were rolled out in Ashington, not being up to scratch; changes having to be made due to the LED light being more focused; an additional 1,800 columns having to be replaced; and issues in Galliford Try’s supply chain, such as its main sub-contractor going into liquidation.

He added: “It’s been a hard process to go through and I know in some areas it’s been difficult, but we have got there now and it has really improved the street-lighting stock in Northumberland and brought other benefits.”

The new lights have resulted in a 64% reduction in energy usage and costs on an ongoing basis as well as saving more than 6,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions.

Street-lighting manager Gavin Barlow also said that while the council used to receive around 200 to 300 reports of faults each month at this time of year, it’s now down to ‘a handful a day’.

Coun Glen Sanderson, the cabinet member for local services, said: “The principle was the right one and if starting again, we would probably do the same thing, but the differences would be around the tightness of the contract.

“The thing that wasn’t right was the level of consultation that should have taken place, primarily by Galliford Try. It did bring fairly significant difficulties that it needn’t have done if the consultation had been done properly at the start.”

It was originally billed as a £25million scheme, but the report states the current budget is £38.3million, however, it is currently expected to cost the authority ‘significantly below this level’, based on the outcome of ‘discussions on a number of contractual and commercial issues still in dispute between the council and Galliford Try’.

‘The discussions to resolve these issues are commercially confidential and could be subject to legal proceedings and therefore it would not be appropriate to provide further detail within this report at this time,’ it adds.