The Lamp Room

So whats happened to NLC in Harlow?, the internet is saying it’s ‘permanently closed’!, the website has been down for weeks too? Have they gone out of business?

Probably fucking gone rich. They don’t sell a £10 LED panel out of China so bet their business dries up.

It seems like it just happened though, there doesn’t seem to be a pre warning that I know of?, they were also reasonably well priced too!

The lighting market has changed and all the decent shops that made honest money selling good quality lamps at a steady pace are going replaced by ones who don't give a shit sell the cheapest china shite at a massive markup are here to stay. 3 month warranty if your lucky if the shop stays open that long!

Agree nick I don’t think they even honour the warrantee most of the time. The schools I look after that had the massive LED installation annoyingly whenever they fail they don’t get him back who fitted them we just go in and replace it they don’t even bother with a warrantee

National Lamps and Componments was a division of Internationl Lamps Limted but sadly the company ceased trading on 28th February 2023.

Isn't that the exact date that some of the tube bans were forcibly enforced?

Not yet, as of September 2023, it will be illegal to use fluorescent tubes in the UK? This is just one of the many changes that the 4th Reich aka the EU Commission has made to the RoHS Directive, which governs how electrical contractors must handle mercury-containing lamps. so much for Brexit, and so much for a Democracy.

That explains why we’ve had this energy company come in at work to fit a huge energy monitoring system, and wants to pull out every single existing fluorescent tube that’s still being used !, including my 4 foot twin HF battens in the stores that I still have 4 boxes of tubes for!

It's not illegal to 'use' fluorescent tubes, would be impossible to enforce anyway. It will be illegal to import into the EU / UK or manufacture within the EU / UK Any fluorescent light sources for use within these areas. It's still perfectly legal also to manufacture within these areas if the tubes are for export to an area outside of the new legislation.

It's still also perfectly legal to sell existing stocks within areas affected by the ban.

So, no reason at all to replace lamps if you don't want to. Anyone telling you they're illegal is also trying to pull a fast one.