Street lighting
Lighting for Staffordshire maintains more than 108,000 street lights and illuminated signs throughout Staffordshire to reduce the risk of accidents at night, improves public safety and help reduce the fear of crime.
As well as monitoring street lighting and illuminated signs on a continuous basis, we also rely on light failure and damage reports received from residents, pedestrians and other road users. We are responsible for the installation, maintenance and repair of all adopted lighting units.
Lighting for Staffordshire have been awarded a 25 year PFI (Private Finance Initiative) contract to carry out the renewal of life-expired road lighting and illuminated traffic sign equipment on the road and streets of Staffordshire (excluding unitary authority of Stoke on Trent and motorways passing through the county) together with the ongoing maintenance of the apparatus. The contract covers some 108,000 pieces of apparatus over the contract period.
The types of lights maintained are:
- Street lights / lampposts
- Lit road bollards
- Belisha beacons
- School flashers
- Lit traffic signs
- Subway lights
Some street lights are owned and maintained by Housing Associations and maintenance of street lights in some new developments or private roads are the responsibility of other organisations.
You can find out if a street light, lit bollard or a lit traffic sign is maintained by Staffordshire Highways by looking on our street lights map.
Street lighting repairs are made on a priority basis, with highest priority being given to faults presenting the greatest risk.
Maintenance and repairs
Lighting maintenance and repair schedules for your area are provided by Lighting for Staffordshire:
How do I report a faulty street light or lit traffic sign?
The easiest way to report a lighting issue is to report it online using Report It.
Each lamppost, lit bollard and illuminated sign has a unique identification number stencilled on it, this is usually a black number on a white patch. Please make sure that you include this information in the report where possible as it helps us to identify the issue.
Lighting repairs are made on a priority basis, with highest priority being given to faults presenting the greatest risk.
Emergency faults include:
- exposed cables
- equipment which has been knocked down or is leaning precariously
- equipment with a door missing.
What happens after I report an issue?
Once you have reported an issue, you will be provided with a unique reference number.
For street lighting and lit traffic signs; Eon are contacted by ourselves to inspect and repair all lighting faults, they aim to inspect issues reported within 5 working day and from this day carry out any subsequent repairs within the following 5 working days.
For traffic signals; these are inspected and repaired by our own Lighting Engineers, issues such as ‘all traffic lights being out’ and traffic lights ‘stuck on red’ are treated as a priority and will be actioned as soon as possible. Some system/timing faults can be reset remotely by the Engineers, alternately engineers may need to attend the location to diagnose the issue.
These timescales may not always be possible during high demand and priority issues taking priority, during these times, repairs will be completed as soon as possible.
It should not be necessary for any follow-up contact to be made by you once you have been supplied with a reference number and confirmation of your report.
I am concerned that a lighting column has been struck meaning that it is leaning and electrical wires are exposed, what do I do?
These issues are considered a risk to public safety. Please make sure you report these immediately using Report It.
Please make sure that you select the correct category as this prioritise the work and an engineer will be notified immediately.
There is no supply to a light or number of lights, what does this mean?
If it is established that there is a no supply to a lighting unit then this will be passed on to Western Power Distribution to repair the power supply.
If there is a single column with no supply this will be repaired within 30 working days of no supply being identified or if its multiple columns then Western Power Distribution will carry out the repair within 25 working days.
I saw a crew attending a light, but they drove off and the light is still not working, what’s happening to the light?
There are several reasons why a crew may not fix the light when they attend. They may need to inspect the light to diagnose where the fault is occurring, they may not have the correct equipment/parts the carry out the repair or the issue may be with the lighting supply which needs to be reported to Western Power Distribution.
The crew will return to complete any outstanding works as soon as they are able.
I want to request for a street light to be moved, how do I do this?
Please raise a new report online.
A street light is shining into my property and is causing a nuisance, what can I do?
Please raise a new report online.
I want to speak to a lighting engineer or meet them to show them the problem. Is that possible?
Due to the volume of reports we receive from the public it is not possible for a personalised response to be provided to every enquiry and generally we will provide updates electronically on your report reference. Where we feel it may aid an inspection or assessment of the problem you have reported, we will try to contact you to discuss this further.
A street light I have previous reported as been fixed but it is now faulty again, what do I do?
Please raise a new report online.
We ask you to do this, so we can perform a re-inspection and can raised any works that are necessary. If you include your old reference number on the new report, we will investigate why this happened.