Northamptonshire Council criticised for lighting 'double standards'

Leaders at Northamptonshire County Council have come under criticism after leaving their headquarters floodlit while switching off thousands of street lights across the county.

As part of controversial plans to save £2 million, the council is currently switching off half the county’s 66,000 street lights.

Opposition leaders and the county newspaper – the Northampton Chronicle and Echo –  suggest this smacks of a double standard when the authority’s headquarters at County Hall in George Row, Northampton, and the staff car park in nearby Angel Street remain floodlit at night.

Council cabinet members have defended the decision to leave the lights on at the front of the building, arguing that they need to be left on for ‘community safety’, but opposition leaders said this sent the wrong message to Northamptonshire residents.

Opposition councillor Brendan Glynane (Liberal Democrats, Delapre) was quoted in the Northamptonshire Chronicle as saying, “People are really upset about half the county’s lights going off, so at least half the lights on County Hall should go too. They should go away and have a long, hard think about it and realise they should be taking the pain of this switch-off with everybody else. I know they’re saying they’re there for security, but where’s the security for the people in sheltered housing complexes who are having half their lights switched off?”

Lighting contacted the Institute of Lighting Professionals (ILP) to comment on the story and its technical services manager, Nigel Parry, had the following to say:

“The way the council has handled the lighting budget and implemented a programme to switch off alternate street lights with no consultation of any means has infuriated the residents of the county, with due justification. The examples of the floodlit building and car park just indicate that the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing – as they may well be run by totally different departments and/or staff. The cost of a few floodlights to illuminate the county hall will not make any difference to the £2 million savings but the county could have looked at switching off these less critical locations before considering the routes that young people use to walk home a night.

“The ILP would remind authorities looking at switching off their street lights that the road lighting was initially installed for good reason and that switching them off is very likely to have implications. New technology can provide a variable lighting system on the streets and dim the lights down to, say, 20 per cent of their maximum values in the middle of the night, when few people are on the streets, but then keep enough illumination to safely walk home.”

Whatever the outcome of the furore, it appears the street lighting blackout is only likely to be temporary. An unnamed source told Lighting that the council doesn’t have enough money to pay its lighting bills at the moment but has just finalised a 25-year PFI deal with Balfour Beatty to start replacing a large percentage of its stock with new lights in the autumn.

Northamptonshire Council leaders were unavailable for comment.

This story was amended at 17.22 on 4 August to include the news of Northamptonshire’s impending PFI contract.

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