Funding, skills, asset management and attachments all remain key worries for local authority lighting teams, latest ILP research has concluded. But the impact of local government reorganisation and AI, among other pressures, are also creeping up the agenda.
By Rob Baines
This time last year the ILP carried out an informal survey of local authority lighting members to find out what pressures and stressors were most keeping them awake at night (‘How do we get more of the skillsets we need?’, Nov/Dec 2025, vol 89, no 10).
This summer we repeated the exercise and, I am pleased to say, members once again stepped up to the mark, with some 108 members this time responding, encompassing approximately 25 local authorities.
What we found was that skills and recruitment shortages remain a top worry (with rising workload and responsibility the other side of that coin). Getting the local authority funding balance right, plus simply having enough money to go round, remains a further tough nut to crack.
Attachments – both informal in the shape of flags and in terms of smart city assets and EV charging – are another headache. Running alongside this, asset management – the management of columns, cables and lanterns – remains a deep worry.
IMPACT OF LGR
It is also apparent there are some new worries and pressures creeping in, and which I expect to move further up the agenda in future years. Local government reorganisation (LGR), for one, is clearly beginning to niggle quite loudly in people’s minds, especially when overlaid with trying to manage the complexities of PFI expiry.
We do need to bear in mind, of course, that this polling was carried out before the government’s dramatic move in September to postpone LGR, after a review of new legal guidance.
As one member emphasised: ‘[It is the] outcomes of LGR and effect it will have across counties; potential loss of lighting policy direction/expertise.’
The impact of AI on lighting is another ‘new pressure on the block’, with members in particular highlighting the workload involved in responding to often now AI-generated complaints from the public.
As one member put it: ‘Those that we have received tend to be longer and more complex than previously received, taking longer to investigate respond to.’
Drilling down into some of the detail, funding overall remains the top worry, especially if you combine this concern with ‘resources’.
The challenge here, as one member put it, is often the need to be balancing ‘extremely large’ capital budgets with ‘stagnant’ revenue budgets, and authorities often also using funding constraints as an excuse not to invest in expanding the team.
AGEING WORKFORCE
On skills, while notionally the second highest worry, again there is an argument that it actually tops the list when combined with concerns around ‘recruitment and retention’ (plus again, potentially, there is overlap here with ‘resources’).
Councils, one member put it, ‘are short-staffed, we are not able to train from within’. Local authorities were suffering from ‘a loss of technical expertise’, said another. ‘Seems to be a lack of interest in lighting from the younger generation. Not sure what can be done to encourage more people to take up lighting as a career,’ said a third.
Another member made the very valid case that, against the backdrop of LGR, it is even more imperative we have skilled lighting teams within local authorities. In particular, they argued we need to be looking at: ‘How the ILP can share the importance of good management for streetlighting assets with local government leaders ahead of changes linked to local government reorganisation.’
On asset management, one member highlighted the challenges associated with the handover of assets from local authority projects at the end of the construction phase of projects. ‘It would be good to hear from other local authorities how they manage the handover of new assets for internal highway projects,’ they said.
Dealing with unadopted or unchartered streetlights was another concern raised. ‘We try to work with the county council on this but, as they are tied into a PFI contract, adding additional streetlights to their contract is very expensive,’ explained one member.
‘Perhaps in some ways LGR will improve this, however I think there needs to be a national policy on adopting unadopted streetlights as it doesn’t sit comfortably with me that there are streetlights on the network that are not being routinely inspected or tested,’ they added.
DOGS DOING THEIR BUSINESS
Finally – and still on asset management – one intriguing area of growing concern appears to be the impact of dog walkers, or more precisely the dogs themselves, on columns.
‘Streetlights in parks and well used dog-walking routes stuffer from accelerated corrosion,’ pointed out one member. ‘So better protective measures are needed as asset life expectancy can be reduced. Feeder pillars also suffer in the same way and we are now looking to place new feeder pillars on raised concrete stalls to reduce impact of dog urination,’ they added.
I’d like to finish up by, once again, thanking all members who took the time to take part in our research and supply their thoughts and insight. Your contribution has been very much appreciated, and will feed into how we continue best to support local authority lighting teams going forward.
Rob Baines is the ILP’s local authority lead as well as electrical assets commissioner, Highways and Place, at Derbyshire County Council
This is an abridged version of the article that appears in the October edition of Lighting Journal. To read the full article, simply click on the page-turner to your right.
