Council apologises for not alerting residents to faulty lights sooner

Wellington City Council has apologised for not alerting the public as soon as it was discovered the fixings on around 700 LED streetlights in the area were faulty.

The faulty fixings are causing some LED light heads, installed in 2017, to drop from lamp poles onto the street below.

"These fixings should last as long as the street light itself, which is about 25 -30 years," Wellington City Council's Transport and Infrastructure manager Brand Singh told 1News.

He said the council are assuming all of the 1000 lights in the batch are failing.

"There could be 400 - 500 in that batch that aren't faulty, but we aren't going to take the chance, we're going to replace all 1000," said Singh.

However, he could not say exactly where the faulty lights are located.

Less than 10 light heads have fallen so far, and the council is working to find and replace the rest "within this year".

"As soon as we've identified where all of these are, and we're pretty close to identifying where all of them are, then we can start engaging our contractors and getting onto replacing them," said Singh.

Ninety per cent of the time, the LED lights, which weigh around 15 kilograms, are replaced before they fall.

"15kgs is quite a weight to fall for the height of the street light," Singh said, but is assuring residents the safety risk is no more than crossing the street.

He said the council has known about the issue for two years and apologises for not alerting residents sooner.

"We should've been more direct in terms of what we did and we're very sorry that this has happened and occurred.

"We wear full accountability for what has happened here," he said.