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39 County Council - Lighting Proposal PDF 55 KB
Additional documents:
Minutes:
The Committee received a report from the Safer Communities Manager
regarding the County Council’s street lighting proposals.
The Strategic Projects Manager (Assets and Commissioning) Cambridgeshire
County Council also attended the meeting to respond to questions. A document was also made available at the
meeting which provided contact details for the County Council’s street lighting
consultation proposals.
A Member of the public made the following statement regarding the County
Council’s street lighting application:
1.
Ms Nathan asked a)
what the County Council were doing to inform the public of the proposals to
switch off and further dim street lights, b) what the County Council were doing
to make people aware of the consultation and how they could participate, c)
asked how people would know that other formats for the consultation
documentation were available if people were not online and d) asked if
responses were overwhelmingly negative what difference this would make to the
County Council’s plans.
The Strategic Projects Manager (Assets and Commissioning) Cambridgeshire
County Council said the consultation had been published in the Cambridge
Evening Newspaper, however he would speak with colleagues
to ask that a link from the street light consultation webpage was put on the
Council’s main web page. A consultation
with Parish, City and District Council’s had ended in September 2015. The public consultation ran until the 11
December 2015. The Highways Committee
would consider the decision in January 2016.
The provision of paper based consultation documents in libraries was a
good idea and this would be reported back to colleagues.
The Committee
discussed the following issues:
i.
Asked whether the street lighting would be turned
off at the Carter cycle bridge.
ii.
Asked for the definition of a major traffic route.
iii.
Asked what the County Council would do if a
negative response was received.
iv.
Expressed concern that the roads to the Station
would be dark as this was a major route; the street lights could be dimmed
20-30 minutes after the last train and would need to come on 20-30 minutes
before the first train of the day.
v.
Questioned how realistic the projected saving
figure was.
vi.
Requested that the risk assessments undertaken to
determine whether street lights could be dimmed or turned off were published
with the methodology also published.
vii.
Requested the message was taken back to the County
Council that Cambridge was different to the rest of the County as it ran 24
hours a day. The City had 2 major universities
and had a very busy city centre which would retain the street lighting, however
under the proposals when people returned home the areas they returned to would
not be lit.
In
response to member’s questions, the Strategic Projects Manager (Assets and
Commissioning) Cambridgeshire County Council said the following:
i.
The lights which formed part of the Carter bridge
structure were owned by the people that owned the bridge. A risk assessment would be undertaken on each
and every road taking conflict areas into consideration, street lights would
not be switched off on main traffic routes.
Areas where the Police commented that street lights should not be turned
off would also be taken into consideration.
ii.
A major traffic route was defined by the road
hierarchy, for example Mill Road was a major traffic route but link roads that
come off Mill Road would not be defined as such.
iii.
The County Council needed to make substantial savings
(£41 million), if savings could not be made from the street lighting budget
then savings would need to come from other areas.
iv.
Some of the projected savings were due to be
realised from the PFI (Private Finance Initiative) contract, which was still being
carried out.