We look after over 58,000 streetlights and other illuminated items on the public highway across MK. It costs a lot of money to keep the streetlights lit and maintained so we're looking at ways to reduce our maintenance costs and cut our energy consumption whilst still keeping the road network illuminated to a safe level.

With the LED upgrades and CMS we aim to save 5 million kWh of energy and 966 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year.

LED Upgrade

Read our Frequently Asked Questions about the LED upgrade.

We've made a significant investment to convert our 58,000 street lights to LED (light emitting diode). The older sodium orange glow lights are going out of production and energy costs have risen significantly. LED lights are much more energy efficient and help us to reduce our carbon footprint.

The light from the new LEDs will look different to the older orange glow ones, the new lights provide a crisp, white light. They are fitted pre-dimmed and targeted to light up the areas where the light is needed only, reducing light pollution.

The upgrade programme began in 2014 with the grid road streetlights and the final phase, covering 30 residential estates, will take place as follows:

Any existing faults will be picked up during these upgrade works but if you need to report a faulty streetlight to us, please use the Report It form.

Please note, if the streetlight you are reporting has recently been upgraded to LED, it will look different to the older, orange sodium glow and it will come on in the evening later than before due to the new sensor. If the light is still off after sunset for a significant amount of time (e.g., over 2 hours) then please report it.

Central Management System (CMS)

Read our Frequently Asked Questions about CMS here.

To help us managed our streetlights more efficiently, we will be installing a Central Management System in 2023/24 to all our streetlights. Each light will be fitted with a node that sends information to a central control and vice versa. This system will mean we can pinpoint where any faults are more quickly and can plan repairs and maintenance around them. It also gives us the ability to control the light levels so in the future we can lower or switch off lights where they are not needed. 

Lights included in the LED upgrade will have a CMS node attached at the same time. Existing LED lights will have nodes installed on a programme being delivered throughout 23/24.

The nodes on the lights use an ultra narrow band (UNB) low energy radio signal and do not capture any traffic or personal data.

CMS Installation Schedule

*Any estates not mentioned in the CMS installation schedule above will be included with the LED upgrade programme instead.

CMK Streetlights

The lights in the city centre areas were designed differently to the other streetlights. The circuits link 'strings' of lights fed from one power source, like Christmas tree lights. This means that if one of the lights is faulty, all the lights in the string are affected. 

We've made some huge changes to how the city centre lights are powered to prevent all the lights going out together. We're also upgrading the lanterns to LED to provide better lighting levels across the city centre areas.

Throughout 2023 we'll be upgrading 44 electrical cabinets or feeder pillars and adding five more electrical cabinets along the main routes in CMK.

You can find out more detail about this programme in our Infrastructure Upgrade leaflet.