Seems odd, especially when they know they're there when it's time to relamp them.Well, to go off topic, there are a handful of columns on a road in Southampton just before the council boundary. Even though the columns were distinctively Southampton rather than Hampshire, and even though they had Southampton stickers on them, the council missed them out of a replacement scheme because they did not appear on their computerised inventory. Column replacements on the road happened in 2004, but three old columns still survive. Interesting that the Southampton stickers were applied to the columns after the replacement scheme missed them out but before I queried why the columns had not been replaced, so evidently the council knew, but at the same time they didn't know.
Going off topic further, there is
this old traction pole with top entry Eleco HW509 in Portsmouth. Column replacement was done by Hampshire County Council in the mid-1990s, but this one column in the middle of the scheme was missed out. Around 15 years have passed, and that includes the 5 year bulk column replacement programme as part of Portsmouth's PFI. And throughout all of this the traction pole has had its lantern relamped; the last relamp was only last year, so it is not as if it has been abandoned. Eventually it will just get casually replaced.