The Head of Environment at Regulation introduced his report that updated the Committee on the current situation regarding the street lighting maintenance and the progress of the Invest to Save LED street lighting replacement scheme.

Mr Rob Clifford, Service Manager Highway Maintenance Division provided the Committee with a verbal update informing that the Council’s contractor had been asked to undertake approximately 300 repairs each week and the repair of the faulty lighting was to be completed before the end of  April 2016. The repairs will be completed in line with the order of the night-time survey enabling the contractor to concentrate their resources in a specific area, rather than in various locations spread across the Borough.

Mr Clifford further informed that there were a number of street lights that were unlit due to underground mains cable faults and these locations would require the attendance of Scottish Power to complete the repair. Members were informed that although these repairs had been issued to Scottish Power, it was unlikely that the repairs would be completed within the same timescale, since Scottish Power cable repairs times are governed by different targets, outside of the Council’s direct control.

Members expressed great concern with regard to the lack of controls over the targets and deadlines for those street light outages falling to the responsibility of Scottish Power, noting the difficulties faced as a result of the Council’s sub-contractors not being fully qualified to undertake the works associated with such outages. A Member requested a further report, dealing specifically with longstanding outages and works falling under the remit of Scottish Power. He requested that a representative of Scottish Power be asked to attend the meeting to explain the reasons for the delays in addressing the matters at hand. 

In addition to the outages that were known to result from outstanding Scottish Power works, Members questioned Mr Clifford on a number of specific long term outages. Mr Clifford requested that Members contact him direct and provide the locations of the failed lighting and he would investigate the specific reasons for any delays in dealing with the locations identified. 

A number of questions were raised with regard to the administration of complaints and possible involvement of the government regulator for the gas and electric markets (OFGEM) to tackle the failures associated with Scottish Power’s (as provider to the network) handling of outages. Members also made reference to the quality of work undertaken by Scottish Power with regard to the re-constitution of road surfaces and grass verges after works had eventually been completed.

Mr Clifford apprised the Committee on the progress that had been made to date regarding the LED street lighting scheme that had been put into place to replace 7,557 existing high energy consuming lanterns with new LED luminaires. He informed that the project had commenced on 24 August 2015 and was due to be completed on 31 March 2016. By the end of January 2016, 4,117 new lanterns had been installed and the Contractors projected installation  ...  view the full minutes text for item 42