THURROCK'S 21,000 street lights could soon be managed remotely, saving £125,000 a year.

Thurrock Council is proposing to install a Highways Street lighting Central Management System, which will allow it to remotely control street lighting, detect faults and improve the efficiency of the system.

If the project gets the go-ahead, seven base stations will be installed which will interact via the web with the existing street lighting infrastructure, enabling the council to monitor and adapt lighting levels across the borough.

A report to councillors on the Planning, Transport, Regeneration Overview and Scrutiny Committee, which meets next week, says: "The project will generate future energy and CO2 savings as the majority of our lighting assets can be remotely controlled and monitored.

"The project will generate financial savings through a reduction in maintenance costs, such as reduced call outs to faults that have been misreported by members of the public.

"The system will also reduce the number of vehicle journeys that would otherwise be made to attend to some of the reported faults.

"A Central Management System will remove the requirement for night time scouting operations, which are currently undertaken three 3 times a year to identify any street lighting faults before they are reported."

In 2020/21 the street lighting team received more than 680 customer enquiries online and attended more than 900 maintenance faults.

With the new system, faults are automatically registered in real time which should reduce fault reports and complaints from being raised by residents.

The system will also help the council to reduce its CO2 emissions by about 1,524 tonnes annually, which is a total reduction of 30,469 tonnes. This is the equivalent of taking 1,064 cars off the road.

The report added: "This will be achieved by reduced attendance to faults which can be actioned remotely, reduce attendance by the contractor to misreports, reduce vehicle movements on night time scouting activities, plus the identification of day burning columns."

The committee will review the proposal at its next meeting on July 6 before making its recommendations to cabinet.