Issue - meetings

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.