South Kesteven: Street lighting costs predicted to quadruple

Committee members praised the work being done around street lighting and made suggestions around how that could be improved

The cost of providing street lighting in one Lincolnshire district is set to increase by at least four times the current budget, officials have warned.

The current electricity budget for South Kesteven was originally set at £171,000.

But council leaders said it was expected to hit around £688,000 by the end of the 2024 financial year.

It comes as the authority looks to step up its programme of replacing street lights to LED lighting.

Cabinet Member for Waste Services and Climate Change, Councillor Mark Whittington, told a meeting of the Environment Overview and Scrutiny Committee on Wednesday utility bills were "quite volatile".

"We can see what the impact of increasing utility costs could have on the cost of providing street lights," he said.

South Kesteven District Council leaders said street lighting costs could rise by more than 300%

However, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, Councillor Whittington said if all the council's street lights were upgraded, the cost would take more than 2 years to be paid back.

"In effect, after a couple of years, we've paid back all the costs of the upgrade and then we can start to make some real savings," he added.

But he warned: "It's quite volatile and obviously, if utility prices change differently to that, it will have an impact on the payback period."

South Kesteven District Council currently oversees around 4,000 lamps and has so far replaced 571 lamps with LEDs.

So far that has resulted in 6% of savings and reduced carbon emissions by 14%, the authority said.