Liverpool to light up with energy saving LED scheme

A multi million pound scheme is to begin this week that will see almost 2 thousand Liverpool streets fitted with new LED lights. A total of 15,000 street lights, serving 1,890 streets, are to be fitted with the "white light" energy saving bulbs over the next year.

Phase 1 of the ₤7m programme began in Fazakerley, in June 2014, with 12,000 lights changed across 1,800 streets and the second phase is to begin where the City Council has developed its Home for A Pound scheme.

Liverpool City Council has made the move away from the orange sodium lights in its drive to make Liverpool a greener City and cut the City's carbon footprint. Approximately ₤2.6m is spent by Liverpool City Council per annum on the energy costs associated with running the 57,000 street lights and illuminated signs and bollards across the City. The upkeep of old street lighting is costly both in terms of energy consumption and ongoing maintenance costs, and this is money that could be invested elsewhere as the City Council tackles a 68% cut to its 2010-2020 budget.

Mayor of Liverpool, Joe Anderson said:- "LED street lighting not only improves the lighting across the City it makes our streets safer and our City cleaner. Already through Phase 1 we have made our City a healthier place to live by saving 1,500 tonnes of carbon emissions and achieved savings of more than ½ a million pounds. Our maintenance costs will also reduce by ₤2.7m overall over the next 5 years once all of the street lights have been converted. We can then reinvest this saving in to other key services and communities at a time when unprecedented cuts are forcing us to make some heart breaking decisions."

Liverpool City Council is working with SSE Enterprise to roll out the new phase of LED street lighting.

The implementation programme has identified the oldest street lights to be replaced 1st and will begin in Webster Road, Wavertree, which is to feature in a new 3 part Channel 4 documentary, on the:- 'Homes for a Pound Scheme,' at 9pm, on Wednesday, 14 February  2018.

The Project Manager for SSE Enterprise, John Bate said:- "This is an exciting opportunity for SSE Enterprise to work in partnership with the Council to reduce their energy and ongoing cost of its street lighting whilst making a dramatic improvement to the quality of light for its residents and communities."

This second phase will reduce the energy consumption for these lights by 82%, cutting the Council's energy bill by a further ₤260,000 a year. There will also be a reduction in carbon of about 1,300 tonnes, bringing a saving of ₤21,000 and there will be maintenance savings of approximately ₤47,000 a year.

The LED scheme will heavily reduce the Council's carbon footprint which, according to recent Government statistics, has already achieved a staggering 18% reduction in carbon emissions since 2012. And thanks to a number of energy saving initiatives and investment in renewables, that cut could double to 35% by 2020; far surpassing the 20% target set by the EU Covenant of Mayors, with the Mayor of Liverpool, saying the City should aim to be the greenest City in the UK.

Since 2012 Liverpool has seen a 550% rise in registered renewable energy installations (from 589 to 3,131) and has produced 558,000 fewer tonnes of CO2 at a rate of 70,000 tonnes per year; the same volume as 280,000 double decker buses!

Did you know? The annual programme and further information about LED lighting can be found online.

CIOT calls for debate on the uneven Tax burden imposed on employed and self employed labour

RESPONDING to the publication of Good Work plan, the Government's response to the Taylor Review, John Cullinane, CIOT Tax Policy Director, said:- "It is to be welcomed that the Government are taking Taylor's recommendations seriously. However, by ruling out changes to the rates of National Insurance Contributions (NICs) in relation to employment and self employment, the Government are denying themselves many of the tools they need to tackle the issues Taylor identified around employment status. In addition, they risk ignoring the vulnerability of the Tax base to changing patterns of work. The imbalance between the Tax burdens on employment and self employment remains unsustainably large. No solution will be painless or immediately popular. This does not mean the problem can be ignored. It means there is a need for full public debate in which the problem can be clearly explained and we can, as a society, identify the most promising options and build support among the public. As we said in the Better Budgets report, 2 there needs to be improved consultation, in particular ensuring that consultations happen before key decisions have been made by the Government, if we are to have better Tax policy. We hope that Government departments, especially the Treasury and BEIS but also HMRC and DWP, work together to achieve a solution that leads to a more efficient and less complex Tax system for working people."

Taylor stated that:- 'treating different forms of employment more equally in the Tax system would be fairer, more economically efficient and support better quality work.' 3 We agree. It is not clear whether the Government do.

John Cullinane said:- "The big differential between the NICs burden on employment as compared to self employment, particularly as regards employer's NIC at 13.8 per cent, creates a perverse incentive for employers to try to engage with people 'off payroll'. This persists despite efforts to deal with the situation by successive waves of anti-avoidance legislation."

The Government also said that they want to make it easier for both the workforce and businesses to understand whether someone is an employee, worker or self-employed; determining which rights and Tax obligations apply to them.

John Cullinane said:- "This is welcome, but risks missing the wider point that different statuses apply for employment rights and Tax purposes. We have a mismatch between having 3 different categories of workers (employed, worker or 'dependent contractor' and self employed) for employment law but just 2 for Tax (employed and self employed). As long as the borderlines between different Tax statuses can be fuzzy and open to interpretation, we are likely to continue to see confusion and inconsistency among Taxpayers and their employers, and exploitation of workers in too weak an economic position to resist entering into work arrangements that HMRC might be expected to challenge."