Street Lighting

I cycled in this morning's pouring rain to Dukes Road – the westernmost road in East Acton ward - to visit the depot of the Council’s new street lighting providers EDF Energy. EDF will be modernising all the street lighting in the Borough over the next five years – renewing and upgrading over 20,000 lights and lighted street signs. Five years ago the Borough had the worst street lighting in London, after decades of under-investment – by 2010 we will have probably the best and most modern street lights in the capital.

In just the first year of the EDF contract, East Acton ward is having more roads receive new street lighting than any other ward in Acton. The following roads in our ward will get the new lights :

Brassie Avenue
East Acton Lane
East Churchfield Road
Glendun Road
Horn Lane
Kathleen Avenue
Leamington Park
Noel Road
Park Royal Road
Park Royale (Service) Road
The Vale
Victoria Road

Replaced street lighting tubes ready for recycling

This follows some major improvements over the last three years – most notably the total replacement of the outdated street lights on the East Acton Estate, and new lighting for the Valetta Road area off Acton Vale.

The new EDF depot is a formerly decrepit and empty warehouse that has now been totally modernised by EDF to provide offices, a meeting room, and warehousing and storage for new fittings, equipment and parts. This should mean none of the ‘we’re waiting for the parts’ delays of the past. They’ve also created a design office with CAD printers, which means that design work can be undertaken in-house and directly informed by local knowledge. Overall, 24 EDF jobs are now based at Dukes Road.

They have impressive new computer software – mirrored at the Council – which can call up and map the condition and situation of every street light and illuminated sign in the Borough. This produces daily summary reports which show progress on repairs, maintenance and installation, and which form the basis of payments and/or penalties to EDF. The Borough is divided into 18 “scouting” zones for inspection purposes – given our size East Acton ward covers all of zone N and parts of zones 0 and P - and contrary to the urban myth, these inspections are made at night rather than during the day.

I asked the EDF project manager Richard Austen about two particular problems that we’ve faced with street lighting modernisation in East Acton – delays caused by the electricity monopoly connector (“jointing”), and Borough border roads getting missed out of schemes. Richard told me that they have a local contact and regular meetings with Southern & Scottish as the ‘jointers’ - and the contract gives EDF a strong incentive to chase them because payments are based on lampposts successfully installed rather than removed. The borders issue – which occurs because of the way highway authority responsibility is shared between Boroughs – is one that EDF and the Council will need to discuss further, but I’ll keep chasing. East Acton has the longest border of any ward, and it’s been really annoying that parts of roads like Old Oak Common Lane and Jeddo Road have lost out in the past because of this legal loophole.

EDF are undertaking a wholly new survey of the condition of street lighting in the Borough, and then this will be combined with police reported crime data to establish a new priority list for the five year programme. If you live in East Acton ward, feel free to contact me at phil@east-acton.com if you think a case can be made for a your road to be a high priority.