You're lucky you get your columns painted at all!

Here in Lancashire all new columns are galvanised and unpainted whereas Blackpool's PFI installs aluminium columns which look good and nice and shiny at first then quickly become dull in appearance after a couple of years.

In Wyre Borough our columns used to be two-tone dark green base and light green column tube which is attractive. Some have been repainted in this scheme in recent years (don't tell the Government ).

Blackpool's columns used to be an attractive shade of sky blue, Fylde's (mostly cast-iron) columns were brown and cream and Preston's were dark blue and light blue, which I was fond of. Lancaster's had black columns since the early 90s.

I think it's a shame that these liveries are disappearing as they added a bit of character to the area they were in and the loss of these liveries is a further example of the homogenisation of streetlighting, not just in the UK but across Europe.

Wirral was brown rather than red. Back in the day this livery applied to some road nameplates too! Most of the old liveries have been repainted in the off white colour. Wirral is probably one of the only places which repaints lighting columns, not seen it done anywhere else for a while. There was actually a short period when normal columns were painted black here too!

There are new columns in Southport replacing the cast iron ones, these are unpainted.

Trafford has always been black with a gold ring has it not?

I always preferred Liverpool's Grey. The shading always seemed unobtrusive to me.

Trafford has been using black since the 90s - before then it used a blue and grey colour scheme.

I forget to add that Birmingham is mainly using Black as part of the PFI. Although I reckon some areas will retain their distinctive colour schemes (for example Handsworth being red)

The stripes (white on black or black on grey/metal) on lighting columns, sign posts, controller cabinets etc are to improve their conspicuity to partially sighted pedestrians.


To a point they are just functional, but we don't want all our streets looking bland with all furniture being solely chosen for function - galvanised columns everywhere would be rather boring.

Some of the decorative lighting used in town centres must cost much more than the maintenance of a multi-coloured painted column, anyway.

I thought that had been given as the reason.

So they are to be painted black "to save money" but someone will have to go back around painting or adding a white stripe. The logic seems a bit wrong somehow, would it cost any more to just paint the bottom section a different colour in the first place and not have to go around adding the white stripes. Or even paint a more visible colour.

I like the traditions of twin colours in many towns and, unlike another comment added, think the local MP and newspaper would strongly object to a distant bureaucrat telling them that they have to repaint them all ugly black.

Trying to remember if the towns with their own two colours used the same colours on local buses and perhaps council vehicles?

Surely, if the councillors are not up to scratch it is for the electorate to kick them out and elect different ones, which often happens if they ignore their residents views. I doubt they got postbags screeching outrage at two tone lamp post schemes.


But if that were the case plant hanging baskets hung from street lamps should be forbidden as they distract from their core function? Some street furniture is there for aesthetic reasons. We have ornate lamp posts for aesthetic reasons, we have coloured block paving, so there is no reason why there should not be liveried lamp post paint schemes.

Anyway what is wrong with promoting a brand when the organisation owns the lamp posts. Should all post boxes be painted black instead of red with a black base because the red promotes a brand and all over black would be cheaper?



You could equally say "I cannot see what benefit having ornamental lamp columns provides other than increased maintenance costs and therefore higher council tax" That is surely an argument for the sort of dour utilitarianism that brought us brutalist concrete tower blocks in the 1960s.


I'm not that great a fan of two tone myself. But surely the point is that if the council wants to get rid of two tone then that is fine, it is some cabal of bureacrats in Westminster (who don't seem to be aware of the Disability Disrimination Act) deciding to pass regulations forbidding two tone colours that I object to.

As to black being considered environmentally sensitive. By Whom?

In the old days sign posts were not painted black and white for fun, it was so that people could see them and not walk into them at night. I suspect the current fad for both painting everything black and then taking the fuse out of the streetlights will end in tears.

The bands make them visible by providing a contrasting colour, light coloured columns and galvanised sign posts etc have black bands.

Direction 41 applies only to posts erected specifically for the purpose of mounting a sign; not lighting columns.

Wigan doesn't seem to have black columns AFAIK, apart from some WRTL 2600s sporadically installed; although Chorley likes black WRTL 2600 columns though.

I can see the reason for not putting in painted columns - if you think that a painted column costs about £100 more than a plain galvanised column, over the course of a financial year where you are trying to replace as many defective columns as possible it soon adds up.

It depends on the environmental conditions that each local authority is subject to. Take Blackpool, where wind-driven salt spray travels inland for some distance pretty much most of the time. Aluminium columns are pretty much a must-have if you are to get any value for the replacements over an extended period, which is why I am surprised that Lancashire have gone for sturdy tubular steel (which will no doubt be painted) on a replacement scheme on Clifton Drive. Somewhere further in-land though it is a different story, where painted steel is only for decoration and not protection.

North East Lincolnshire have gone for coated tubular steel in a nice dark green colour, or where refurbishing, painting them in the same colour. While NEL doesnt have a huge problem with concrete columns - only Cleethorpes Borough used them - they have had problems with taller Petijean sheet steel columns and of course the many 1960's tubular steel columns with taller poles and outreaches such as these.

Wigan has black columns in a large number of places, including every town centre area and a number of local village areas. They are also found in a number of smaller localities, such as Darlington Street East in Wigan and just around the corner from me on Firs Lane (both Coalfields Regeneration areas).

We should go back to exposed concrete!

Haven't noticed any black columns near me, but in Norfolk's conservation areas the signposts are painted black.

Sefton MBC recently completed some replacement schemes on main roads in southern Southport. The columns were installed as plain galvanised. A week later, all the new columns including the ones that hadn't been replaced (i.e. previous casual replacements sporting new lanterns anyway) had been painted dark red and cream - a colour scheme which I can only assume is a throw-back to Lancashire days.

So, a local authority can paint a lampost in two-tone? That's a relief, if so. I was thinking that this was the ultimate example of just how centralized this country is compared to almost every other in the developed world.

What about traffic lights? Are they classed as 'signs' in this case?

Southport never had 'Lancashire days'. It was a county borough from the day modern local government was brought in, as was Liverpool, Bootle, St Helens, Manchester etc.

I was just referring to pre-Sefton MBC, when it was in Lancashire County Council's area.

Yes but they won't be able to mount new signs on it.

Signal poles are also covered by the directions and must not be of more than one colour unless specially authorised.

Wasn't there a good level of cooperation between the County Boroughs and Lancashire County Council? I seem to remember that Lancashire had a reputation for innovation and when Bolton got illuminated Zebra crossing poles being told that Lancashire had been the first to use them, implying that other authorities in the area picked up the idea from them. I wonder if there could have been common standards in the whole of the county even in the County Boroughs?