Relocating a street light

Residents and businesses in Wokingham borough can apply to relocate street lights to enable new or improved accesses for residential driveways or junctions for new developments. You should first check who manages or owns the street light – we can only assist with assets under our ownership. 

Our street light map will advise you if the street light you would like to move is not managed or owned by the council. The map will also provide a street light number which you will need.

Our process

We support our residents, where possible, to allow them to widen driveways and increase available off-road parking on their property however any proposal to widen or create a driveway will first need to be assessed through our drop kerbed application process (see Apply for a dropped kerb page) We will not relocate a street light unless a dropped kerb has been approved.

The relocation of street lights is often complicated by the layout of the existing lighting system. The spacing between adjacent street lights is critical for the distribution of light on the road surface and, therefore, moving one street light a few metres could have a detrimental impact on lighting levels on the existing highway.

The relocation of our street lights can only be carried out by us, not by other third-party contractors. 

We won't be able to give you an indication that approval is likely, without processing your application and undertaking a technical assessment first.  Please discuss your proposal with any neighbours that might be affected prior to submitting your application.

Technical assessment after application

Once your application fee is received, one of our experienced street lighting engineers will assess the  site within 28 days and undertake a technical assessment to determine whether it is feasible to safely relocate the street light.

We aim to advise you on the outcome within3 weeks of completing the site visit, subject to our other workloads.

• If the technical assessment supports your application, we will advise you accordingly and send you a quotation for the works at the same time.
• If the technical assessment doesn't support your application, we will contact you via email to let you know why the street light cannot be relocated.

Relocation work

Once we have received your full payment in advance, we will order the works.

Depending on the power cable ownership and type, we rely on either the Distribution Network Operator (Scottish & Southern Energy Networks) or an Independent Connections Provider for the disconnection and re-connection to the electrical supply.