South Gloucestershire Council

Published: 17/10/2014

Crews from the council’s StreetCare team have replaced thousands of faulty photocells on South Gloucestershire’s streetlights, ahead of the autumn hour change on Sunday 26 October.

The photocells control when the streetlights switch on and off and are a vital element in the area’s part-night lighting regime.

New units were installed to support the rollout of part-night lighting in 2013 but a manufacturers’ programming error meant that they fell out of synch by an hour for about two weeks during the spring and autumn hour changes.

The faulty units have been replaced by the manufacturer at no charge to the council and by this autumn’s hour change, more than 9,000 replacement photocells in mainly urban areas will have been installed. A final 3,000 units, in mainly rural areas, will be replaced by the end of November.

In areas where the replacement photocells are being installed after 26 October, existing street lights will continue to switch off an hour earlier than intended, at approximately 1045pm. This is expected to begin on 20 October and will last for about two weeks, before units come back into line with GMT or are replaced as part of the ongoing works.

As well as resolving the hour change issue the replacement units have also been adjusted to operate to the council’s revised part-night lighting regime of 1am to 5am, providing an extra hour of light each night.

Head of StreetCare Mark King said: “Replacing this many photocells over a relatively short period of time has been a big challenge but we’ve made excellent progress and I’m pleased that we will have done the majority of the work by 26 October.

He added: “We’re now awaiting the final few thousand units and these will all be installed by the end of November. We’re grateful for residents’ patience while we finish the job.”

Part-night lighting was adopted by the council in 2008 as part of measures to conserve energy and reduce carbon emissions through South Gloucestershire. Approximately two-thirds of the district’s 30,000 street lights have been switched to part-night operation. Find out more about street lighting.