In 2019/20 Choice Housing carried out lighting upgrades at a number of our sheltered or supported housing schemes, with LEDs fitted along with sensors to ensure lighting is available when it is required.
Choice has an ‘Energy & Sustainable Development Strategy’ in place, and we have a target to invest £150,000 over two years in enhanced energy projects. LED lighting in common areas of housing schemes was quickly identified as a worthwhile investment, and so 3 housing schemes were selected to have this upgrade carried out. We are currently commencing work on a further 6 housing schemes to have similar LED lighting upgrades carried out, with work intended to be completed in early 2021.
In total, across our 3 schemes in 2019/20 over £60,000 was invested, with numerous benefits for Choice and our customers. Electricity costs are normally passed on to tenants as part of service charges, and so reduced electricity consumption will not only have a positive impact on the environment, but it will also deliver financial savings for our tenants. In addition, the new lighting is anticipated to reduce maintenance costs for the Association and have an extended life expectancy. One area often overlooked is the quality of light which offers health and safety improvements. Positive feedback was received in this area from a number of tenants, including one comment that it was an improvement for their painting classes which were held in the common room at their scheme.
Following a lighting upgrade, another tenant commented that “We are all really impressed with the new lights. They are so much brighter than the old one’s and really help to provide a nice bright and safe atmosphere in the corridors and outside areas of the scheme. We also really like the automatic lights in the corridor and works really well in staying on long enough to get from the lift to our apartment. We also haven’t noticed any not working, where with the old one’s every week there was always one or two in our corridor that needed to be replaced.”
As these upgrades are recent, we are not able to provide any information on reduced electricity consumption yet, however based on 3 similar previous upgrades at other schemes we have estimated an annual saving of around 20,000kWh per scheme, with annual cost savings of over £2,000 per housing scheme.
