Trees lit from below are returning to 2 Preston streets after faults knocked them out

Preston tree lighting is set to return on Fishergate and Corporation Street after faults and deteriorating support infrastructure left the illuminated trees switched off on two of the city centre’s best-known routes.

Two city-centre streets that had gone dark in the trees are being lit again.

Fishergate and Corporation Street in Preston are due to have their tree lighting restored after a run of faults forced the system to be disconnected. It is a small fix on paper. In practice, it is the sort of streetscape job people notice immediately when it disappears.

In brief:

• Tree lighting is due to return to Fishergate and Corporation Street in Preston.
• The lights had been disconnected after several faults.
• The supporting infrastructure had also deteriorated because of water ingress.

Why Preston tree lighting failed in the first place

The interesting part here is not the bulbs. It is what happened below and around them. Decorative street lighting fixed to or around urban trees can look simple from the footway, but the weak points are usually the hidden bits: cabling, joints, fixings, connection points and whatever is meant to keep water away from live equipment in a British streetscape. When that fails, the result is rarely dramatic. It just stops working, then stays dark for far longer than anyone expected.

In Preston’s case, the lighting had to be disconnected because of “several faults”, while the infrastructure supporting it had “deteriorated due to water ingress”. That phrase matters. Water ingress means water has found its way into a part of the system where it should not be, whether through worn seals, damaged housings, failed joints or ageing fittings. Once that starts, reliability goes first. Safety concerns tend to follow.

For drivers, this is mostly background. For people walking through a city centre in the evening, it is not background at all. Decorative lighting changes how a place feels. It can soften a shopping street, make a route feel looked after and turn ordinary planting into something that pulls the eye upward rather than towards shutter lines and clutter. When it fails, the effect is oddly blunt. A street can feel flatter overnight.

These lights were introduced after the revamp of the streets, which means they were part of a broader attempt to reshape the feel of the city centre rather than a bolt-on extra. Prior to that revamp, Fishergate and Corporation Street were described as a tree-free zone. That gives the scheme a longer arc than a maintenance fault. The trees came first as part of a redesign. The lighting followed to make them work after dark as well as by day.

There is a familiar highways lesson in that. Public-realm upgrades often arrive with a maintenance tail that is less glamorous than the opening photos. Trees need managing. Lighting needs inspection. Electrical components in exposed urban settings age badly if moisture gets into them. The result is that a feature which looked settled can quickly become a snag list with roots.

It is also a reminder that street lighting is no longer just about columns and lanterns spaced along the kerbline. Town and city centres now use light in more theatrical ways: feature columns, uplighting, integrated fittings and kit designed to make one part of the street feel distinct from another. That can work brilliantly. It also creates more points of failure than a standard column-and-lantern arrangement. Preston is hardly alone in that, as other authorities are also rethinking how lighting shapes place as much as visibility, whether through decorative schemes or larger network upgrades such as Leicester’s city-centre lighting rethink.

What changes now is straightforward. The tree lighting is expected to return on Fishergate and Corporation Street, bringing back a feature that had vanished because the system could no longer be left connected. For nearby businesses and city-centre regulars, this is one of those small-but-visible signs that maintenance has caught up with design intent.

And that is usually the point with street lighting stories worth noticing. The hardware is technical, but the effect is social. People do not talk about water ingress over dinner. They do notice when a well-used street looks dimmer, harsher or less welcoming than it used to.

On two of Preston’s central routes, the upward glow is coming back.