Street lighting

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Footway lighting

North Kesteven District Council is a lighting authority. This means we provide, install and maintain lighting designed to assist pedestrian movement at night. Footway lighting is sometimes referred to as amenity lighting. North Kesteven District Council cannot provide road lighting which is a system of lighting units designed to assist movement of vehicular traffic and reduce night time road traffic accidents, this standard of lighting is the responsibility of the Highways Authority, i.e. Lincolnshire County Council.

There is no statutory duty imposed on a lighting authority to provide lights. A lighting authority may install a light anywhere it considers suitable in the public highway, and may remove these lights at their discretion.

Parish Councils may also be lighting authorities and NKDC acts as an agent for the Parish Councils. Footway Lighting systems are not designed, but provided as desired by the Parish Councils because it is thought they are best able to judge the requirements of their communities.

Signage on columns

If anyone wants to display a sign on a street light column, they must get permission from the owning authority. Street lights owned by Lincolnshire County Council have a yellow box with black lettering inside marked on the column and lights owned by North Kesteven DC have an orange box with black lettering inside marked on the column.  

What lights do we use?   

We aim to use LED lighting wherever possible. They have a longer life and reduce running costs. LED lighting reduces the spread of light and reduces light pollution. We are conscious of light pollution when installing new lighting. We use a standard specification for columns and lights as recommended by Lincolnshire County Council. This keeps the infrastructure uniform and means that installation costs are similar for each parish. This also allows maintenance costs to be kept to a minimum. 

Who pays for it?  

The full cost of lighting is paid for by the charge payers living in the ‘Lighting Area’ and is based on a formula where the total cost of lighting is divided by the total number of lights to produce a cost per light - the cost per light is multiplied by the number of lights in a particular parish and this is converted into a cost per taxpayer.

Who fixes the lights?   

The District Council employs Lincolnshire County Council to do regular inspections and quarterly maintenance. If a column is knocked down in the event of a traffic incident (etc.), the District Council will endeavour to claim the cost of the lights repair via the offending parties insurance company.

The District Council endeavours to investigate any faults within 10 working days of the fault being reported.  

If you require any further information, please visit Lincolnshire County Council’s webpage on street lighting.