A trial switch-off commenced in the largely rural districts of Maldon and Uttlesford in 2007 and after being declared a success, the city of Chelmsford and Braintree town were switched off on September 1st. Colchester and Basildon will follow on November 1st, Clacton will follow on January 1st 2014 (that'll come as a shock to those returning from New Year's Eve parties!) and Harlow's lights will be switched off on February 1st 2014.In the end, Colchester residents had to wait a month longer than expected before part-night lighting came into effect, after the policy was twice challenged by opposition councillors, delaying its introduction twice, and by two weeks in each case. This pushed back the switch-off date to December 1st.
In nearby Braintree and in the city of Chelmsford, the street lighting was scheduled to be switched off on September 1st, and again this was met with stiff local opposition, but it eventually went ahead on September 16th:
Daphne Close in Great Notley (near Braintree) photographed in October 2013, after part-night lighting was introduced.
This area of Great Notley wasn't built when Essex last saw part-night lighting in the 1980s, but many of its residents will still remember those days, and also remember that it wasn't a blanket switch-off as currently being introduced by Essex County Council. Instead, about one-in-three or one-in-four street lights (usually those situated on bends or at junctions) were kept on all night.
Cuckoo Way in Great Notley, also photographed in October 2013.
Cuckoo Way has fewer domestic properties fronting it, and with less porch lights to guide the way and less sky-glow, the stars become visible. The orange glow crossing the road in the distance is from street lighting in an alley way leading off from Chatsworth Avenue. Street lighting in alley ways is currently not switched off for safety reasons.
Lastly a photo of Charlecote Road in Great Notley, also photographed in October 2013, and even with porch lights switched on, the number of stars in the sky is amazing!
Meanwhile in Colchester, the originally scheduled switch-off date of November 1st descended into farce after maps showing which street lights were scheduled for switch-off weren't published until the day the scheduled switch-off was meant to start, leaving residents with no right of reply and making a sham of the so-called "consultation period" according to opposition councillors.
Until then, residents were only able to make an educated guess as to if their street lighting was going to be on or off from the exception criteria published on
Essex County Council's web site. The switch-off date of November 1st was pushed back until November 18th accordingly, to allow councillors and residents to study the maps and register their opposition.
Needless to add, the maps came as a shock to many people, especially those who remember what Essex County Council said when they started trialling part-night lighting in Maldon and Uttlesford in 2007 (that no street lighting within a mile's radius of the town centre would be switched off). The Gazette newspaper published the map below
in this article about the street lighting switch-off.
A map of Colchester published by the Colchester Gazette after it consulted the maps of the proposed street lighting switch-off published by Essex County Council.
The map shows the central area of Colchester, and showed that even some parts of Colchester town centre would be plunged into darkness alongside many arterial roads that are lined with commercial premises. The Gazette also highlighted some inconsistently applied policies, for example street lighting should have been scheduled to stay on in roads covered by Colchester Borough Council's CCTV network, in roads with a high concentration of business premises and on footpaths.
This led to plenty of calls to reconsider a number of these decisions, and the switch-off was delayed by a further two weeks to allow enough time for concessions to be made to the plan.
Councillors won a number of concessions - alley ways and arterial roads were the big winners.
The publication of the maps enabled me to look at plans for the Dutch Quarter of Colchester town centre (where I live) for the first time. The Dutch Quarter is the area bounded by St. Peter's Street to the north and the High Street to the south in the above map.
When I moved here in 2005, the vast majority of the street lighting in this largely residential quarter of the town centre was Phosco P111s running 35W SOX lamps on fluted Stewart and Lloyd columns. As these columns have reached the end of their lives over the intervening years, they have been replaced with Phosco P111s running 70W SON lamps on Corus and later Fabrikat columns.
It has been a gradual process, but SON lanterns now hold the dominant position:
Plans of the Dutch Quarter from 2005 to 2013, showing the gradual replacement of 35W SOX lanterns with 70W SON lanterns.
Once replacement of all the 35W SOX lanterns is completed in the next decade or so, the Dutch Quarter could be using just as much electricity to run 70W SON lanterns on a part-night basis as it was using for 35W SOX lanterns running all night long!An extract of Essex County Council's street-lighting switch-off plan showing the Dutch Quarter, as published on
their web site.On the above map, the locations coloured yellow retain full-night lighting (notably Colchester High Street at the bottom of the extract), and the locations coloured green were originally scheduled for part-night lighting. This was despite a number of the streets in the Dutch Quarter being covered by Colchester Borough Council's CCTV network, alongside roads with a high concentration of business premises (notably St. Peter's Street, at the top of the extract) and footpaths between trafficked roads.
Although the street lighting switch-off did eventually begin in Colchester on December 1st, and the
purple flag on the town hall (which signifies how safe the town is to visit at night) was lowered to half-mast in sympathy*, it turns out that parts of the Dutch Quarter, including my road (St. Peter's Street) are in fact still under review. This means that sometime in the future the lights that currently go off in my street at midnight may start staying on all night, or those that currently, and inexplicably, stay on all night may start to go off!
* This didn't actually happen, although the Council may struggle to retain its purple flag next year as a result of part-night lighting.
Below are two photos of St. Peter's Street. Puzzlingly (as hinted above) some of the street lighting in my road currently stays on whilst the rest go off, and there seems to be no pattern to it. The street lights that do stay on seem rather random and are arguably no help to Colchester Council's CCTV operators.
A long view of St. Peter's Street looking west to east, as photographed in December 2013. The first street lantern is a bowled Philips SGS203, the second a Philips MI26 and the rest are post-top Phosco P111s.
The same view after midnight, also photographed in December 2013. Inexplicably, the lanterns on the third, eighth and ninth columns remain lit.
There appears to be a blanket switch-off in the rest of the Dutch Quarter, although with so many one-way streets in this Tudor-built neighbourhood, the many sign lights take over, creating the fluorescent glow in West Stockwell Street shown here. Photograph taken in December 2013.
Looking towards the High Street (as here in Short Cut Road), the glow of the street lighting that stays on all night can be seen. Photograph taken in December 2013.
Lastly, here's the view outside my home before the lights go out. My building has a 70W SONPAK-style flood light illuminating the entrance to the underground car park, the same wattage as the P111 on the pavement outside. Photograph taken in December 2013.
And the same view after midnight. The lanterns on columns eight and nine inexplicably remain lit, with a further SONPAK-style flood light on a commercial property further up the road adding extra light. Photograph taken in December 2013.
So in a policy change that I never thought would be reversed when it was adopted in the 1980s, I am now back to living under the part-night lighting I last experienced as a 10-year-old!