Street lights will no longer have to be put on new housing estates built in South Holland.
Developers would have to pay a ‘commuted sum’ if they wanted to include non-highway, footway or place marking lighting on new builds with Lincolnshire County Council set to change its street lighting policy.
A meeting of its Highways and Transport Scrutiny Committee voted through the proposed change while keeping the policy that existing lights be switched off from 12pm to 6am introduced in 2019.
John Monk, of the county council’s design services, said the new measures “provide increased choice for planners and developers” and they would create “the atmosphere they are looking to create on new developments”.
Though the measures were voted through not all councillors agreed.
Coun Rob Gibson said: “South Holland has a lot of factories with people going to and from work at all hours of days.
“People are walking down these streets at night clutching alarms and keys and I’m not comfortable with this policy where we’re going to have no lights.”
He also asked if crime had increased as a result of lights being switched off.
“In some areas crime had gone up, in some crime had gone down as well, so there was no demonstrable link,” Mr Monk answered. “If police have concerns on part light impact on crime they’d said they’d talk to us and that hasn’t happened.”
A member of the public David Matthews was also allowed to speak to the committee.
“The first requirement of any design is that it is safe,” he said. “In this case it’s obviously, not particularly if someone gets hurt or, even worse, killed, the Health and Safety Executive will investigate.”
He also suggested it would be more cost effective for the county council to put in LED lights.
“We’d love to do that but it’s about affordability,” said Mr Monk. “I agree in an ideal world we’ve had turned everything into LED but we just could not afford to.”
Authorities are able to apply to have them off if it’s paid for by upping the council tax, but Mr Monk told the meeting the only authority to have successfully applied for that was Pinchbeck Parish Council where four lights were being kept on all night.
He also said that as a result of the 2019 change the council’s electricity usage was down from 22.9kw to 8.6kw for the 21/22 financial year meaning the bills had reduced from £4.13m to £1.55m.
“Energy costs are only increasing, and the same with the purchasing costs, and we now know costs are going to increase by 67 per cent by October 1,” Mr Monk said.
