Lighting on motorways and trunk roads is maintained by National Highways. District, borough councils and housing associations own the lighting in their own car parks and housing areas.
Inspections
We're developing a risk based approach to our condition inspection for street lighting.
Our highways network is inspected routinely to ensure it's safe. Find out more about our inspections.
Our repair timescales
We work to fix faulty street lights, light signs and bollards as quickly as practicable. We prioritise emergency faults followed by locations where there are a group of 3 or more lights out together. All remaining work is collated into area locations to maximise efficiency. Currently we aim to complete this in an average of 28 days.
Sometimes the fault can be due to a problem on the local electricity company's service connection so there's no electrical supply. There are usually between 200 and 300 of these faults each year. They take the longest time to repair as the local electricity company has to locate the fault, excavate the footpath or road, and repair it without disruption to any local commercial or residential supply.
New street lighting
New lighting is only installed on existing roads where there's a night-time casualty record, evidence of high levels of night time antisocial behaviour or where justified as part of other measures to improve road safety.
Lighting is installed on new housing estates where the streets (or footpaths) are being adopted by us.
Developers (sometimes called builders) will be required to install street lights in accordance with our requirements but are responsible for all maintenance costs until formal adoption takes place. This can be carried out in parts or with full roads on the development and can take some time before the developer is ready to ask us to adopt.
Once it's accepted that the road including the street lights comply with our requirements, we'll take on full responsibility for future maintenance including energy costs.
When lights have reached the end of their operational life an assessment will be made of whether lighting is still required before replacement options are considered. Find out more in the street lighting specification document attached to this page.
What can I report or request?
You can report emergency street lighting faults or a general street lighting fault using our report a street light online form.
You can also request to move a street light or attachments to a street light.
You can request a copy of our street lighting asset management plan or specification by using our highway policy document request form.