Northamptonshire City Council’s PFI Streetlighting project reached financial close on 2 August 2011. Connect Roads Northamptonshire Limited, an SPV established by Balfour Beatty, was awarded the 25-year concession. It will deliver, over a five-year core investment period,55,000 new lighting columns, and modernise 11,000 existing lighting points.
Balfour Beatty will operate the project in conjunction with the Cambridgeshire Streetlighting project, and the savings which arise from this joint operation will be used to reduce the cost to the city councils.
The project is expected to deliver considerable energy and carbon savings over its life. The new street lighting will introduce brighter lights that use less electricity than the current street lights. There will be a centrally controlled system to allow the lights to be dimmed in the early hours of the morning and to detect defective lighting.
The lenders to the project are Barclays and NordLB, who each provided half of the £57 million in senior debt for the project.
Operis provided financial model audit services as well as tax and accounting review on behalf of the lenders and Balfour Beatty Capital.
