Dear Sir,
Durham County Council intend to remove street lights along the C35 Middridge Lane – between Byerley Park and Middridge (9 columns), between Middridge and Thickley (17 columns), and along Walker Lane (10 columns).
DCC approved a policy of street light reduction in housing areas, and of removal in non-housing areas, in 2012. As engineers survey different roads, proposals for removal are being brought forward throughout the county. As proposals are made, they are put out for consultation. There is always (understandably) local anger.
Having been through a number of these now, I have to say that they are very difficult to stop. There are always comments that the removals will be dangerous. However, before making the proposals, DCC uses an independent firm of consultants to conduct a safety analysis on a column-by-column basis, and they have already identified the columns which are not safe to remove, and have proposed mitigation safety measures. Set and very clear rules are used to determine whether columns should be retained.
Therefore, in my experience, lighting along these country lanes can only be ‘saved’:
(1) where the local council does a deal with DCC to pay for the lighting – thus GATC saved its lighting along the A167; this was not quite as expensive as was feared.
(2) for individual columns where it can be proved that the consultants ‘got it wrong’ – e.g. where they are unaware of something that local residents know about. Thus it is worthwhile looking in close detail at the safety reports.
Accusations of corruption, complaints about the methodology, appeals to history, and anecdotal assertions etc. (justifiably in my opinion) fall on deaf ears. Rather less sensibly, imho, the engineers do not take into account future developments – when we were fighting the A167 cuts, and pointed out that Copelaw was going to be developed and they would have to put back in columns they were proposing to take out, we were told that this was not a relevant argument. (Thus I fear that arguments that Eldon Whins is going to be developed will not cut much weight.)
I have posted the key documentation to the interweb and you can read the covering letter here: http://www.johndclare.net/Community/MiddridgeSLERP.doc
You can see the detailed proposals/ safety reports/ mitigation measures here:
for Byerley Park to Middridge: http://www.johndclare.net/Community/48C35b.pdf
for Middridge to Thickley: http://www.johndclare.net/Community/49C35a.pdf
for Walker Lane: http://www.johndclare.net/Community/50U42
John Clare