Maintaining Suffolk’s street lights
Customers can use this service to report faulty or
broken street lights. This page will tell you which
organisation you need to contact and how to report a particular
problem.
Who is responsible for maintaining and repairing street
lights?
Suffolk County Council maintains and repairs most street lights
in Suffolk. As well as repairing faults, lamp columns are
inspected and tested to make sure they won't fall down or cause an
electric shock. Potentially dangerous columns are replaced. Lights
are cleaned every year and lamps changed periodically.
However, lights on the following roads are maintained by W S
Atkins, telephone: 0800 3891736:
- A11 from Newmarket to Thetford and Norwich;
- A12 (north) from Lowestoft (River Waveney/Bascule lifting
bridge) to Great Yarmouth;
- A12 (south) from Ipswich to Colchester and London; and
- A14 from the Midlands to Felixstowe.
Some other lights are the responsibility of borough,
district, town or parish councils but some of these organisations
have requested the county council to manage these on their
behalf.
Some new lighting is provided by developers of new housing
estates. Once the development is complete, the street lighting,
roads and pavements are usually handed over to the county council
for their future maintenance. Until this happens, any faults with
these lights need to be reported to the developer.
Possible problems with the electrical supply
If a street light is flickering it might not be that the
street light alone is at fault, but the electrical supply
is faulty. If your house lights are also flickering, this
could indicate an electrical supply fault. If this is the
case, please contact EDF Energy on: 0800 783 8838.
Reporting a faulty street light
Street lights owned and maintained by Suffolk County Council
have a plastic plate attached to the lamp column which
gives a reference number for the column and a freephone
number to call to report the fault. To report a faulty street
light which you think is the responsibility of the county council,
it would be helpful if you could provide us with the following
information:
- details of the fault eg is the light not working at all? is it
an intermittent fault? is the light staying on during the
day?;
- reference number on the lamp column;
- road name;
- town or parish
If you do not know the reference number on the lamp
colulmn, please give some other means of locating the light, such
as a nearby house number. From this information we will know
whether the light is one which is maintained by Suffolk County
Council and if it is not, try to provide you with information on
who may own and maintain it (but we may not always have this
information).
The freephone telephone numbers for reporting faulty
streetlights are:
- Bury St Edmunds town: 0800 591058;
- Ipswich Borough Council council tax payers: 0800 591057;
- Lowestoft: 0800 591056;
- rest of Suffolk: 0800 591055.
Timescales
Suffolk County Council's contractor inspects street lights at
night to find out which ones are not working. The target time to
repair faulty street lights (whether they are reported to us by the
public or discovered as a result of the inspections) is
normally within two weeks. However, depending on the cause of the
problem, this is not always possible. If
we find the cause of a faulty light is
a problem with the electricity supply, we will refer it
to the electricity supplier, currently EDF Energy. It can
take several months for EDF Energy to fix the fault,
dependent on their other commitments at the time.
In some cases, it is not possible to repair streelights as there
in not enough safety clearance from the overhead cables for
the workers. This means that we can notcarry out any work on the
light without EDF staff or switching the electricity off.
Additionally, the light may not be owned by the County Council. If
it is not we will be required to get approval from the owner for
any work that may be necessary. Due to the complexity of these
issues, and the fact that every light and site is different, we are
unable to give any timescales for when the light may be
working again.
This is an issue with a large number of lights across the county
and every effort is being made to resolve each light as soon as we
can. In addition we are working to try and find permanent
solutions, by moving lanterns, so that we do not have the same
problem again.
Requests for new lighting
If you think an additional streetlight is necessary, you
could contact your local
parish or
district
council to see whether they would support the request for
additional lighting. They would normally be expected
to pay for the costs of the initial installation, and any
associated maintenance and energy costs. The provision of new
lighting has been very restricted for a number of years. The
county council is trying to reduce light pollution, energy
consumption and maintenance costs, and is very unlikely to provide
any additional lighting.
For more information contact your
Customer Service
Centre.