The public lighting maintenance contractor is generally required to repair or replace failed public lighting within 14 calendar days of an outage being reported.

In recent years, average repair times have exceeded this target due to industry-wide withdrawal and non-availability of SOX lanterns, which are no longer manufactured and are outside the control of the Council. This has constrained replacement availability and impacted response times.

Significant progress has been made over the past 12 months as the Council’s LED replacement programme has accelerated, increasing the availability of harvestable lanterns and spare parts. In 2025, 6,178 public lights were repaired, representing a 23% increase on 2024, and the current public lighting outage level across the county is approximately 3.6%.

While repair times are not yet consistently within the 14-day target across all locations, performance has improved compared to previous years. The Council continues to work closely with its contractor to identify efficiencies and improve response times, particularly as the LED rollout progresses.

To strengthen transparency and monitoring, the Council has included an additional performance indicator in the Annual Service Delivery Plan 2026, targeting 85% of public lighting repairs to be completed within 14 days. The objective remains to return to a 14-day average repair timeframe county-wide as conditions continue to improve.