Fears over street light cut-backs
 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11209143

I can see this being a useful way of cutting costs but only if care is taken over where it is done.What do you think?

Re: Fears over street light cut-backs
 

Those who stargaze should be pleased. Otherwise if this is just in the wee small hours of the night, very few will even notice.

Re: Fears over street light cut-backs
 

I think its a great idea. But I'm not too sure about this Great British Compromise:

:) An added bonus!

Re: Fears over street light cut-backs
 

Why not just switch off every other one? 50% savings at a stroke and still enough light to find your way.

Re: Fears over street light cut-backs
 

I wish they'd turn off the one outside of our window!!! Shines directly in on the bed.. Gonna have to deal with it myself soon

:sniper:

Re: Fears over street light cut-backs
 

Our local council decided to save money by fitting low-energy lamps to the street lighting.

But since the current units didn't fit the bulbs they achieved this by replacing every street lamp on all the city's main roads.

Erm, savings?

Re: Fears over street light cut-backs
 

All it would take is a simple shade device to make sure that the light doesn't go where it's not needed :rolleyes:

Re: Fears over street light cut-backs
 

My local council has recenting installed a lot of new lights in the borough, all appear to have deflectors pushing the light down onto the road. I think this is the new standard for street lights, but of course will cost money to replace lights every where.

Also suugested that the traffic lights on the traffic islands should be switched off at night, don't know why they were installed in first place as caused more congestion.

If local councils are going to save money, perhaps a 50% cut in councillor allowances should be the first to be implemented.

Re: Fears over street light cut-backs
 

I was going to suggest the same thing. A lot of streets have very bright lights that cover a larger distance than the older ones for the same power requirements. 50% is a good start.

Maybe they could invest in LED lighting on the bases of the street lamps as markers for night time strollers?

---------- Post added at 12:55 ---------- Previous post was at 12:54 ----------

I believe the council has to take action on remedying this. The same thing happened at one of our old houses and they came round and put a small blanking plate on one side after our neighbour complained to stop it shining directly in. Mind you these were old style round topped lights not the standard shine down ones you see now.

Re: Fears over street light cut-backs
 

Depends how far apart they are.. Fine if they are every 20 metres apart. Not so good if they are 100 metres apart.

---------- Post added at 13:00 ---------- Previous post was at 12:56 ----------

It would require a major investment, but what about motion sensitive lights? The only slight problem I can see is the fact that a cold streetlight can take up to 1 minute to warm up.

Re: Fears over street light cut-backs
 

Turning off street lights shouldn't result in any problems at all. -

That is always assuming that every road user will fully obey the Highway Code. and that any pedestrains will be totally safe walking pitch black streets in the wee hours.:erm:

Re: Fears over street light cut-backs
 

The way I look at it is that £700,000 is a few jobs saved across the boroughs.

Re: Fears over street light cut-backs
 

Or - One new Council Chief Exec, plus a couple of spin doctors. The residule would go toward giving 'golden handshakes' to the standing down Chief Exec and spin doctors. The remainder, will of course come out of front line services.

Re: Fears over street light cut-backs
 

Cynic!:p:

Re: Fears over street light cut-backs
 

except a field day for vandals, car thieves and burglars !!

Re: Fears over street light cut-backs
 

They operate at any time of day..Not just between the hours of midnight and dawn.:rolleyes:

Re: Fears over street light cut-backs
 

That was when it was as easy to see them at night as in daylight ;)

Re: Fears over street light cut-backs
 

Inform your local council and they (well Northants CC did ) will come out and put a shield on one side to prevent it lighting your property up. Worked for me.

Wasn't a brilliant solution, but I admired their commitment. A set of blackout curtains as well sorted the problem.

I still have problems with those cheap B&Q night lights that are only about 10watts that fill my rear bedrooms from adjacent properties. More a problem for my visitors and not me.

Re: Fears over street light cut-backs
 

This would be awesome!

Just imagine living in a place where it goes dark at night time. It would certainly improve our quality of life. The original justification for having so much light at night was crime prevention but security has improved a lot over the years. Apart from those damn flood lights that people install above their front door so when you walk past their house you get blasted with 900 quadrillion watts of scorching light. Idiots.

Who cares what MP's think. They do all they can to promote fear and distrust amongst we who have to pay their way. MP's should keep their mouths shut unless they have something useful to say. Idiots.

Who cares what Local Authorities think. They want as many lights as possible so they need more maintenance and 'investment' so that can justify taking as much of your cash as they can get away with. Also Idiots.

Darkness at night time. Who would have thought.

Re: Fears over street light cut-backs
 

Agreed. Comparing the sky where we often holiday in the far reaches of Scotland with Surrey - in between every star we see at home there are a thousand or more visible. An amazing sight.

Re: Fears over street light cut-backs
 

There was an article some years back in New Scientist about "low pressure street lights" that used much less juice. You could install more of these to provide better lighting rather than simply more. This reduces glare upwards and make things safer for driving.
I don't remember the figures but the power reductions was such that you could double the number of lights and still make massive savings off the leccy bill.

One the crime concerns it was noted that the villans likes shadow so by having more less bright lights you reduced shadow you also (in theory) could make things safer.

Re: Fears over street light cut-backs
 

Yesterday they came around our street and fitted low energy bulbs in our street lights..

The only difference I noted last night was that the light they gave out was blue rather than yellow.:erm:

Re: Fears over street light cut-backs
 

I used to live near a road that had a lot of red lights. Very busy at night, too.

Re: Fears over street light cut-backs
 

There's one small problem with this idea. How do you actually switch off all the street lamps at once at a set time?

AFAIK, most street lamps in the UK work on photocells to turn and off when the light falls below a certain level. Most lamps are also wired directly into the mains on what are called "unmetered supplies". In other words, they're not all fed down a special cable with a switch and meter at the Town Hall end, but just into the normal supplies which run to our houses.

The Buckingham CC trial was switching off lights in areas completely, not for part of the night.

As the BBC News story alludes, it would require massive investment in new technology and probably someone to visit every street light in the UK to fit it.

Re: Fears over street light cut-backs
 

It probably would involved a massive investment although the costs could be reduced by using remote control switches that are connected to the control system via a mobile phone network.

Costs could be further reduced by fitting the switches to lights during routine maintenance.

Re: Fears over street light cut-backs
 

LED lights regulated by a PIR so that they come on when actually needed. Fitted during routine maintenance.

Right, we've sorted that one. Next!

Re: Fears over street light cut-backs
 

We used to have bluish street lights. It was great to see bats dashing past collecting flying insects that were attracted to them. Then they changed the lights to sodium. Never saw bats in the street since (only in the back garden). Be great if they returned!

Re: Fears over street light cut-backs
 

The guy who regularly has to swap street light bulbs around here says that a huge saving would be made if the council paid for QUALITY lamps that lasted for years and not the low cost rubbish they are importing from China which only last a few weeks.

Re: Fears over street light cut-backs
 

Perhaps they should follow Surrey's example:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-surrey-11275951

Re: Fears over street light cut-backs
 

i concur however i am suprised something like that was not implemented accross the board years ago

Re: Fears over street light cut-backs
 

The local community council has a resident meeting once a month where the local community police officers are also in attendance. The street lights have been disappearing on an area by area basis around here, and the subject of increased crime due to the lights going out has been discussed at these meetings.

We had a very good readers letter in our local newspaper on the subject a few weeks ago, I cant recall the exact figures but the person asked along the lines of.

Why the council were patting themselves on the back for saving a projected £750K in the next financial year by turning off street lights, when the unpaid council tax for the 2009-2010 period stood at almost £1.5M. The person who compiled the letter went on to ask the council if it would not be better to pursue the unpaid council tax then they could afford to leave on the lights.

I have not seen any reply yet from the council.

ps. I believe the police were going to ask the council to re-instate the lights in some areas due to the increase in crime