£10m Coventry streetlight upgrade to begin within days
Over 28,000 LED lights will be installed over the next two years, starting with those in the city centre
The £10m upgrade of Coventry’s streetlights is set to start within days.
New LED ‘lanterns’ are being installed in 28,847 lights over the next two years starting with those in the city centre. The upgrade is set to start within days with contractors just waiting on legal documents to be signed off.
At the latest meeting of the communities and neighbourhoods scrutiny board, Ravinder Sekhon, the city council’s street lighting and support services manager confirmed that the first of the new lanterns were due to arrive this week. Work is set to continue until November 2027.
She said: “We are on target, we are just going through the final legal sign offs. Balfour Beatty have lanterns arriving so as soon as things are signed, they will be rolling them out. They have employed sub contractors who are all geared up.
“The dates are indicative and the list will be updated. It is a case of them dealing with things on the network like parked cars, access and then there is an embargo around Christmas time. They need to factor all that in.
“Where streets have cross ward boundaries, they have been kept in one ward so that you won’t get half a street done. As they are working through it, there might be overlapping with wards.”
Cllr Seyi Agboola asked why his Binley/Willenhall ward was at the bottom of the list with work not expected to start there until August 2027. The ward has 2,228 streetlights, second only to Henley ward where there are 2,451.
Ms Sekhon added: “One of the things we had to take into consideration was the maintenance schedule and the quantity of lights in the wards and the amount of routes. Binley was highlighted because it has a lot of footpaths and will be more difficult to get through that and progress to the others. It was also about managing the traffic flow.
“It was decided to put it to the end because we could deal with it as a whole ward more effectively. It is more difficult to get to the lights.”
She added that the heritage lamps in Coventry’s city centre will be excluded from the upgrade because they are more expensive to replace. Options for these will be considered over the next two years.