Streetlights on footways in North Yorkshire could be switched off between midnight and 5am as part of a new policy.
North Yorkshire County Council reduced the hours its roadway lighting was switched on between 2012 and 2016.
Now its successor authority, North Yorkshire Council, is looking to do the same with footway lights.
The Conservative council, which could be forced to use £105 million of reserves to cover deficits over the next three years, is expected to approve the measure on Tuesday when its ruling executive meets.
It is also expected to approve spending £2.5m on replacing thousands of footway lights before they fail.
The executive will consider a three-step plan to replace 900 decrepit concrete street lighting columns, introduce 4,000 energy efficient LED lanterns on existing steel columns and change sensors on about 2,000 existing LED lanterns to part-night photocells.
An officer’s report to the meeting states residents, parish and town councils will be consulted over the proposed part-night lighting.
The report adds much of the existing footway lighting, which transferred from the former district and borough councils to North Yorkshire Council in April, will be beyond repair within the next five years due to changes in EU legislation that made numerous lamp types obsolete.
The report states it had been estimated some 5,000 of the former district and borough councils’ footway and amenity lights used obsolete light sources such as high-pressure mercury and low-pressure sodium.
It states:
“Within the next three to five years these lanterns will fail, and we will be unable to repair them.
“If we replace the lanterns on an ad-hoc basis, as and when they fail, the process will be less efficient, more expensive and would place a strain on future revenue budgets as opposed to this capital Invest to Save proposal.”
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Switching footway lighting off between midnight and 5am will further reduce energy consumption and contribute towards the council’s carbon reduction targets, the meeting will hear.
Executive members will be told upgrading the lighting to LED would produce an energy saving of 1.3 million kw/h, cutting 340 tonnes of carbon dioxide and £440,000 in annual energy costs.
The meeting will hear the obsolete concrete columns are “most prone to structural failure” and their replacement will offer the opportunity to
provide multi-purpose lighting columns.
The new lighting columns could be used to support attachments such as sensors, CCTV cameras, ANPR cameras, flower baskets, Christmas displays and next generation BT mobile phone transmitters.
The council’s finance boss, Councillor Gareth Dadd, said concerns had been raised over community safety when the council first reduced the street lighting hours, but increased incidences of crime had not transpired.
He said:
”It was a success. We led the way where many other local authorities are now following.”
The authority’s Green Party spokesman and Ouseburn councillor Arnold Warneken said as the proposed programme was set to cut the council’s carbon footprint and save money it appeared to be a “win-win scenario”.
He said:
Royal Mail massively reduces opening times at Harrogate delivery office“It is just scratching the surface of the sort of things we should be doing. There is a definite relationship between trying to reduce carbon footprint and the economy.
“However, from a true green perspective, we should be waiting for these lights to fail because they have an energy inside them that has cost to create them in the first place.”
The Royal Mail has massively reduced the opening times at its Harrogate delivery office on Claro Road.
The site, where people collect mail they missed when it was delivered to their homes, is now open for just 14 hours a week.
It previously served customers for 42 hours a week, which means the service has been cut by two-thirds.
It is now open from 8am to 10am Monday to Friday and from 8am to noon on Saturday. It is closed on Sunday.
It was previously open from 8am to 4pm on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, from 8am to noon on Monday and from 8am to 6pm on Thursday. It opened from 8am to noon on Saturday and closed on Sunday.
The Royal Mail is reducing its opening times to two hours a day at half of its delivery offices.
Local people have expressed anger on social media about the changes, with many saying the times are inconvenient for people who work. One said:
“Why bother opening, most people are at work between them times. Saturday mornings are going to be busy.”
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‘Reduced need’
The Royal Mail said there was reduced need for customer service points, such as those provided at Claro Road in Harrogate.
A spokesperson said:
“We understand the importance that some customers attach to customer service points as one of a number of ways in which they can access our services. An increase in doorstep services such as Parcel Collect and Safeplace are helping us to enhance customer convenience and deliver more parcels first time.
“In May this year, we also introduced automatic redelivery of parcels the next working day across the UK for customers who are not at home when posties attempt to deliver the first time. Over 99% of parcels are now successfully delivered to customers on the first or second delivery attempt. This is reducing the need for customers to collect parcels from customer service points.
“To keep pace with the changing behaviour of our customers, we have amended the opening hours of customer service points. We have a range of options free-of-charge for customers who want to arrange for an item to be redelivered. Details of how to arrange this can be found on our website.
“Approximately half of customer service point opening hours have remained at their current times.”