A £40 million project to convert all the county’s street lights to energy-efficient bulbs has taken a step forward, after council chiefs appointed a firm to do the work.

Kent County Council has awarded the contract to upgrade its 118,000 lamps to Light Emitting Diode (LED) technology to engineering and infrastructure firm Bouygues Energies & Services.

The LEDs will be connected to an individual central management system (CMS) that will allow KCC to monitor and adapt lighting levels.

The conversion work, which will cost £40 million, is due to begin in residential areas in March and is expected to take more than three years to complete.

On Friday, February 12, councillors and officers will meet to discuss the outcome of the 10-week public consultation period held into its Safe and Sensible initiative in which street lights in many residential areas across the county were switched off between midnight and 5.30am.

The controversial scheme has been heavily criticised and the council had to carry out its second consultation after the first, to which just over 500 of the county’s 1.5million residents responded, was deemed flawed in an independent report.

"We can make significant savings to our electricity bill and cut our carbon footprint" Cllr Matthew Balfour

People living and working in Kent have now been asked whether they want to return to all-night lighting, or keep part-night lighting.

Views were also welcomed on dimming the LEDs between certain hours, which will be possible with the new system.

At the moment, the bill for street lights and lit signs is nearly £9.5 million a year in maintenance, electricity costs and the associated carbon tax.

It is expected that converting to LEDs will save taxpayers up to £5.2 million a year.

The project is being partly funded by a £22 million interest-free loan from SALIX, a government organisation, funded by the Department of Energy and Climate Change. It will pay for itself within eight years.

Cllr Matthew Balfour, cabinet member for environment and transport, said: “By embracing LED lighting in one of the largest projects of its kind in the UK, we can make significant savings to our electricity bill and cut our carbon footprint.”

Bouygues Energies and Services Infrastructure has offices in London, Hatfield, Manchester and Glasgow.

Managing director Edward Peeke said: “KCC has shown true leadership in tackling its challenges by embarking on this transformation project.

“We look forward to working with our colleagues at the council to deliver this scheme and to playing our part in supporting the economic and sustainable benefits the project will bring locally.

“This is exactly the approach we believe needs to be adopted across the country to move to a low energy, low maintenance street lighting network.”