St Peter Port aims to reduce street light running costs with LEDs

Friday 16 April 2021

St Peter Port parishioners have agreed to spend £109k on lighting the streets this year - however some of the most poorly lit areas cannot be improved because of listed building restrictions.

Constable Zoe Lihou has taken to Twitter to breakdown the parish's 2021 budget, hoping to explain how the Douzaine rationalises its parish rates.

“We Douzainers have been asking for a lot more openness and transparency when it comes to the numbers - if you're being asked to vote and approve the budget it helps to know what goes on behind those numbers,” said Ms Lihou 

GY1 - if you are interested I am sharing this 8 mins vid to showcase and explain our Remede we will be presenting this evening at Les Cotils 19:30 hrs let me know if you can view it. https://t.co/kb83jDB2TH

— zoe lihou (@lihou) April 14, 2021

Pictured: Ms Lihou led viewers through St Peter Port’s running costs online.

One of the biggest costs is street lighting. It has cost residents in St Peter Port more than £100k to keep the lights on in recent years, with the cost actually rising from £105,000 in 2019 to £109,000 in 2020 and 2021.

“I’ve raised that figure before because I think it’s a large number,” said Ms Lihou. “I think there’s in excess of 1,000 lamps in our streets and it’s on my radar to get in contact with Guernsey Electricity to find out exactly what we’re paying for.”

Ms Lihou went on to say there are replacement costs included in this figure because the parish is moving to LED lighting. This switch-over was referenced in 2020 by two constables at the time, current Senior Constable Dennis Le Moignan and former Junior Constable Jenny Tasker.

“The cost of electric power for street lighting has reduced as the present lamps are being replaced by LEDs” they said in an explanatory note for the 2020 Remede.

Pictured: Over time all the bulbs in St Peter Port will be replaced by LEDs.

Ms Lihou said the push for LED lighting has been driven by Guernsey Electricity: “They say it’s more efficient.”

The CEO of Guernsey Electricity, Alan Bates, explained: "Rather than as a programme of planned works, Guernsey Electricity switches the island's street lamps to LEDs as and when they need replacing.

"We switch the bulbs to LEDs because they are much more efficient than traditional lights and also longer."

Ms Lihou also touched on concerns about darker areas of St Peter Port, where more street lighting could be required. She confirmed the figure voted in last night is only to maintain and run what’s in situ currently.

“We get calls constantly about places like Cornet Street steps where things are badly lit,” she said. “The difficulty we have with certain areas in Town is that they might be protected or historic.”

“I’d be more than happy in some of the poorly lit areas to have triggered solar powered light to add a bit of extra security, but sometimes the places that aren’t well lit are not areas with places we can append or attach things to.”