Street-lighting maintenance services

Description

The Council and Amey Highways Lighting (Wakefield) Ltd (the ‘Contractor’) entered into a Project Agreement on 23 December 2003 for the provision and maintenance of public street lighting within Wakefield (the ‘Project Agreement’). The project agreement has a term of 25 years, ending February 2029, and was entered into pursuant to the national Private Finance Initiative (‘PFI’). The parties are entering into a deed of amendment to the Project Agreement (the ‘DoA’). The DoA will change the Project Agreement so that it requires certain alterations to the street lighting estate, comprising replacement of the current luminaires with LED luminaires (‘LEDs’) and the implementation of a central management system (‘CMS’) (together the ‘LED Changes’). The CMS controls the times at which street lights turn on and off and controls the amount of light by varying the energy consumed. Functional and fault information is sent from the street lights to the CMS. The LED Changes have been in contemplation for some time. A previous notice was published on 12 August 2016 (2016/S 155-281738). The changes described in that notice were not made at that time and the LED Changes described in this notice are the same changes. This second notice is published for completeness and to maximise transparency. Energy cost risk sits with the Council under the Project Agreement. Since it was entered into on 23 December 2003 there have been a number of substantial changes to the energy market in the UK and to the low carbon and green policies being pursued at local, national and international level. These changes are referred to in this notice as the ‘Relevant Circumstances’. The Relevant Circumstances include: energy prices (including tariffs) increasing substantially faster than the indexation rate used for other payments in the Project Agreement (RPIX); in common with many other local authorities the Council is pursuing a reduction in its carbon footprint with an aim of being carbon neutral by 2030 which includes a reduction in the energy consumption of its street lighting estate; technological advances mean that LEDs and other low energy lanterns now offer substantial, tangible and demonstrable advantages (in terms of availability, reliability and efficiency) as does the technical feasibility of controlling LEDs through a CMS (and neither LEDs nor a CMS became available until many years after the Project Agreement was entered into); and there is a continuing national drive for making operational savings under PFI contracts. The LED Changes will help the Council to address the Relevant Circumstances. The LED Changes are forecast to deliver a 65 % reduction in energy consumption. The reduction in consumption will also reduce energy costs, while further cost savings will result from: a ‘night scouting’ operation no longer being required to identify lanterns that have a fault due to the presence of the CMS; and the four-yearly maintenance cycle to replace the bulb in each lantern no longer being required due to the increased life expectancy delivered by the LEDs.