To seek approval to commence the invest to save project for LED street lighting with our Public Realm delivery partner, Balfour Beatty Living Places (BBLP), to deliver community, financial and environmental benefits.

1.     The recommendation to upgrade all street lighting to LED lanterns is based on the success of the previous LED street lighting project and the council’s public commitment to upgrade all street lighting to LED in October 2012.

2.     To date, the council has invested £1.495m to upgrade 30% of street lights and all traffic bollards, sign lights and signal heads to LED. This will generate a predicted saving of £3.877m and 12,153tCO2 over the next 20years.

3.     The proposed savings of the recommendation are set out below:

Option 1 – Not to proceed

Without significant investment in new energy efficient street lighting, the two thirds of street lighting (~9,000 lanterns) would remain old and inefficient. This would result in rising energy and maintenance costs and a failure by Herefordshire Council to meet its targets for carbon reduction.

Additionally there are currently approximately 3,000 lighting columns that are in need of replacement with an overall cost in the region of £3million. This is currently unbudgeted and will be a future budget pressure over the next 5years.

Option 2 – To select an alternative option from Appendix 1 to this report – “LED Street Lighting Options”

This is not recommended as the proposed option of pre-set dimming offers the best value for money with significantly lower capital costs and the highest energy and cost savings.