A major blitz to light up the streets has been launched by Calderdale Council.

They are investing time and money in a new initiative to replace and repair thousands of street lights in areas including Brighouse and Elland.

Councillors have agreed to put an extra £1m into the pot to fund better, lighting in the coming year.

And they want to improve the condition of the lights as well as their reliability and energy efficiency.

A spokesman said: “We’re looking to invest in lighting now to save money and repairs in the future.

“Many of our street lights are old and are not energy efficient. We have invested an additional £1m in street lighting in residential areas in 2014/15, using an innovative ‘sleeving’ method to replace old street lighting columns and install LED lanterns which will reduce energy usage by nearly 60%. This will result in an annual saving of £15,500 in energy costs.

“We are also working hard to repair a number of faulty street lights across the borough. Over the last few months there has been a high number of reports of faults, and over the busy Christmas period a backlog has built up. As of January 6, there were 663 outstanding faults, accounting for 2.2% of our total of 30,500 lights.

“We are committed to clearing this backlog as soon as possible. Our contractor Amey has allocated additional staff to help, and we are looking to complete the repairs required by Saturday, February 7”.

Amey has worked with the council and has produced a tracker that will be updated on a daily basis so that they can monitor repairs progress and check we are on target. In addition to this, they will soon be undertaking a programme of bulk lamp changes during February which will reduce the number of faults due to old lamps.

Calderdale Council’s Cabinet Member for Economy, Clr Peter Caffrey, said: “I’d like to apologise to residents for the number of street lights currently not working and fully acknowledge that recently some faults on existing lights have not been cleared as quickly as I would have liked.

“I know,however, that teams are now working hard to complete these jobs as soon as possible.

“Street lighting is very important to residents, and it’s essential that Calderdale Council invests in the future of our lights.

“By investing in our lighting now, it should help reduce the number of faults in the future, reduce energy costs and improve reliability.”