Work began today on a £6.5million project to convert Hertfordshire’s street lighting to LED lights.

As part of Hertfordshire County Council’s road improvement plan millions will be spent on converting streetlighting on A-roads across the county to LEDs.

The first area of work began in Stevenage today.

Councillor Terry Douris, cabinet member for highways at the county council. said: “The conversion of our existing lights to this modern technology forms part of Hertfordshire County Council’s on-going commitment to maintain and improve roads across the county and benefit all road users.

“The new LEDs have many advantages over the conventional streetlights used currently.

“This type of technology has only recently become affordable, so we are taking full advantage of lower prices now in order to upgrade lights on our busiest roads.”

HCC expect to see savings of £660,000 every year from the end of 2015 and say the lights will use less energy, improve visability and are cheaper to run.

The new lights will be controlled centrally and because of this they will be decreased in brightness by 25 per cent in less busy areas between the hours of 11pm and 6am.

The work will be carried out by Ringway on behalf of the county council.

In order to minimise disruption on these busy A-roads during the day, the work will be done overnight, but minor disruptions will still occur.

A map with details of which lights will be changed is available at www.ringway.co.uk.