Signal fault categorisation | Shropshire Council

Faults can be divided into two distinct categories. Urgent faults and non-urgent faults.

Urgent faults

Where an entire signals installation isn't working
Where signals fail to change
Where defective signals are likely to cause excessive queues and/or dangerous traffic conditions, or have caused abnormal traffic conditions that warrant urgent attention
Where signals have been damaged and are in a dangerous condition
Where one or more lamps is out and/or a signal head is out of alignment or can cause confusion to motorists

Non-urgent faults

All other instances of faults are classed as non-urgent.

What happens once a fault is categorised?

Urgent faults

An engineer will attend the site and undertake a full or temporary repair within four hours from receipt of notification. If a temporary repair is undertaken the engineer will be required to complete a full repair within 48 hours of the notification of the fault. Where it's not possible to repair a fault within the four hours the engineer will turn the signals off and deploy 'signals out of order' boards.

Non-urgent faults

An engineer will attend the site and effect full or temporary repairs within 12 hours from receipt of notification, unless the fault is a non-urgent optical fault, such as a single lamp out, and in such circumstances the repair will be made within 24 hours. In all cases where a temporary repair is made at the time of the first site attendance, the engineer will be required to complete a full repair within 48 hours of the notification being received.

Fault management

We operate a faults management system which allows our officers to quickly pass on faults to our traffic signal maintenance contractor. Once a fault is cleared, the details are passed back from the contractor to our staff.