Dudley Street Lighting Scheme

Works Summary

Fitzgerald’s are working with Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council (MBC) to improve street lighting across the borough, increasing security for businesses and residents whilst also driving sustainability. The works consists of two contracts. The first, a £3.8m scheme, will see 24,000 street lighting lanterns replaced over a three-year period, converting all street lights across the borough to energy efficient LED lighting. As part of this, street lighting lampposts are also being assessed, and, where necessary, replaced. In addition to halving energy usage (reducing consumption by approximately three million kWh per year), the conversion will allow lighting levels to be adjusted to suit the area and time of night. Since the start of the contract in September 2023, more than 11,000 street lights have been converted to energy efficient LED.

“This is a major scheme which will see a massive overhaul of our street lighting across the borough. I’m delighted we now have a contractor in place so we can continue with the next phase of our street lamp replacement programme. We have made a great start to this programme.” Councillor Damian Corfield, Cabinet Member for Highways & Environment, Dudley MBC.  

In addition to this scheme, we have been appointed by Dudley MBC to deliver a Reactive Street Lighting Maintenance and Works Contract. Working with the Council and Npower, the electricity provider, we have developed a process flow chart enabling a rapid and robust response to reactive works (i.e., when a street lighting column has been knocked down). This process defines the approach to be taken to both urgent and non-urgent works. It details co-ordination procedures with Npower for connections and disconnections and sets out requirements for site visits and pricing to enable costs to be agreed with 3^rd parties where columns have been knocked down in a road accident.

Over the last nine months, we have delivered over 180 reactive maintenance jobs on this contract (representing £260k of works) for Dudley MBC. Most of these jobs have been completed within one day. The success of the contract is reflected in the 6-month contract extension that has just been agreed with Dudley MBC.