The lamp that fell at Snapper Point, Evans Bay Parade. Photo: Chris Calvi-Freeman
Wellington City Council has admitted it has known for two years about dodgy fixings in its street lamps, which has caused some of the heavy LED lanterns to fall to the ground.
But only today did it front up.
Former Wellington City Councillor Chris Calvi-Freeman came across a lantern on the ground this week, which weighed around 15 kilograms and was about a metre long.
Council infrastructure manager Brad Singh initially said it found the first faulty fixing recently - but when pressed by RNZ, admitted that was two years ago.
He said they now know a batch of 1000 are scattered around the capital.
Of those, 10 lamps had fallen.
About 300 had been fixed - so about 700 were still out there.
"We've been working really hard over the last period of time trying to figure out where these are, and we're very close to identifying all of them now," said Singh.
"The plan from the council's end is to go on a proactive replacement programme, and we'll be replacing all these fixings."
Singh said the council should know where all the lamps with faulty fixings are within the next two weeks.
They should all be fixed by the end of the year.
Council did not tell residents when the problem was first discovered because they didn't know enough about what was happening - and the risk was not considered great, said Singh.
"Out of a thousand potentially faulty streetlights, and 20,000 on the fleet, and only 10 have fallen down, I think that the safety risk for a resident is probably just as much as walking across the street."
But Singh conceded keeping it quiet was not the right approach.
"We should have been more direct in terms of what we did, and we're very sorry that this has happened.
"We wear full accountability for what has happened."
Several LED street lamps have broken in Welllington recently Photo: 123rf