Im sorry to report that Hastings now seems to be another place where they seem to have been taken in by the LED conspirecy last year when I was here the streets were lit with LP sodium this year I come back and its all changed to crappy LEDs the streets look darker than before with just pools of light under each column

An intersection here had replaced the HPS lights with leds. They are super glary and hardly any usable light hits the ground. The HPS lights that were there were still working so they might've replaced them as an experiment. I hope they realize their mistake.

Thing is, i seen how those LED dudes also put fake claims on how the light have improved. Soemtimes it does improve actually in the numbers (put LED of higher wattage then the original HPS and voila), then thats what they write in their conclusions....

In that case it's be LEDudes. 

Reminds me of a town called Easley about 30 minutes from me. The streets used to be lit almost exclusively with SOX (almost unheard of in the US), but over the last few years, most of the old SOX lights have been replaced with LEDs. Only the smaller fixtures on the side streets remain; all the main roads are now LED lit. The LEDs are plenty bright but they're nowhere near as pretty as SOX.

I could understand why, sox lamps are pretty expensive. Maybe you can get a few lanterns from then I'd you ask.

I had a proper look at the new streetlamps today the bit that lights up consists of 2 squars with six small groups of LEDs in it in a 3x3 patern I can't see how many individual LEDs are there tho. Also at the back of the fitting there are what look like ventilation slots

The problem with exposed ventilation slots on something like this is that they will easily plug up with dust and dirt and bird excrement.  There is a big difference between heatsinks that are good for NEMA 1/IP00 applications and heatsinks that need to handle all manner of effluvia that the former are not impaired by.