New street lights divide opinion, but has saved £100k+ in Ilkley alone

Tuesday, 11 February 2025 17:55

By Chris Young, Local Democracy Reporter

New street lighting installed across Ilkley and the Bradford district has proven to be “Marmite” – but has saved over £100,000 in Ilkley alone.

The Smart Street Lighting Project, which would see every streetlight in the district replaced with LED lighting, was first announced in 2018 and has already saved over £8 million.

It would require the replacement of 56,500 lights over the course of several years. 15,600 “life expired lighting columns” are also being replaced.

The project had the eyewatering cost of £45m – funded through borrowing and loans. But Bradford Council argued that the investment would make huge energy savings in the long term.

At a meeting of Bradford Council’s Keighley Area Committee on Thursday, members were told that a large chunk of the replacement work has already taken place – but there are still hundreds of lights yet to be upgraded.

Despite this, the lights that had been changed had meant the Council was paying £8m less to power its streetlights than it did in 2018.

As well as requiring less energy to run, the lights can be controlled centrally – dimmed or illuminated by Council staff without having to visit each light. The lights automatically contact Council headquarters when there is a fault, which the authority hoped will reduce the amount of times any faulty streetlights are out.

Members were given a breakdown by ward of how much money the new lights were saving a year.

In Ilkley the street lighting energy costs are now £44,875, compared to £164,611 before the new lights were installed.

In Keighley West the figure is even more drastic – annual energy costs for street lighting have fallen from £272,251 to £60,091.

At the meeting Allun Preece Principal Engineer – Street Lighting said:

“We’ve so far saved in the region of £8m compared to whether we’d kept the lighting units as they were in 2018, so it has been quite successful.”

The scheme is also expected to reduce the amount of Carbon Dioxide being released through the street light energy consumption by 6,000 tonnes a year when the project is complete.

Councillor Julie Lintern (Independent, Keighley West) asked what the reaction to the new lights had been. She said:

“I’ve had some people say there is a warm glow, but others say it is like the lights on a football pitch.”

Mr Preece said:

“These lights do tend to be a bit Marmite. Some people say the lights aren’t bright enough and they can’t see their key to put in their door. But streetlights are only meant to light the highways and the pavements. These are better at lighting what is meant to be lit.”

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