Faults and Fault Reporting

Emergency faults

Where there is a significant danger to the public, Emergency Faults are passed to the Contractor by telephone initially and then confirmed later via computer link. All Emergency Fault calls are attended to within 2 hours.

Routine faults

All other faults and general maintenance instructions, are passed to the Contractor via computer link. Every working day, an electronic list of faults recorded over the previous 24 hour period is compiled and the information is passed to the Contractor. The Contractor then has the remainder of the day to organise his work programme and the response time begins at the commencement of work the next day. Only Emergency faults are passed to the contractor over the weekend, i.e. a fault received on Monday after 10.00am will be passed to the Contractor before 12 Noon on Tuesday and the contract response time begins on Wednesday morning.

Local Cable Faults

Localised underground cable faults as well as repairs to overhead cables should be attended to within 5 working days.

Scottish Power Cable Faults

If there is an underground fault in the Scottish Power cable supply, then only Scottish Power's workmen are allowed to carry out the repair. Faults can take up to 3 weeks to be repaired, longer if an extraordinary problem is encountered. The Council meets Scottish Power and other Local Authorities regularly to try to resolve problems and agree priorities.

In some cases lamps will be left on for 24 hours per day until a permanent repair can be completed. The electricity supply to the lighting columns is not metered, so running costs are calculated on an annual basis. The cost is based on the number and power of lamps and the agreed number of hours (burning hours) that lamps will be on when it is dark - approximately 4100 hours per annum.

Lamps can be seen burning during the day for a number of reasons, including:

• Ongoing maintenance works - switched off when work completed.
  Failure of the controlling photo cell - a fault that is easily repaired.
  Faulty controlling time clock - a fault that is easily repaired.

Dark lamps

All instances of Dark Lamps should be attended to within 3 working days. If an additional problem is encountered the lamp may not be repaired within this period.

Replacement Lamp Cycle

The recommended replacement cycle for lighting columns is 25 to 30 years. As there are some 14,100 columns within the Council's area then 500-600 columns should be replaced each year.

Report a Fault

All lighting faults should be reported to: