Draft Letter to Residents Directly Affected by Street Lighting Reduction Trial

APPENDIX B (Page 1/4)

Direct Dial: (01202)262511 Please ask for:Steve Johnson

E-mail: s.johnson2@poole.gov.ukDate: 27 February 2012

The Occupier

Property in Potential Street Light Trial Area

RESIDENTS CONSULTATION ON

POTENTIAL STREET LIGHTING REDUCTION TRIAL - PHASE 2

Dear Resident

Please take this opportunity to share your views with us.

You have been sent this letter as you reside in a road that could be directly affected by a potential street lighting reduction trial. Depending on the views of residents this could be introduced from April 2012 or soon after. The trial involves switching off the street lights in your street from midnight to 06.00 ONLY - at all other times they will remain fully illuminated during the hours of darkness.

This trial has been given support, subject to the views of residents, by Councillors at the Council’s Transportation Advisory Group (TAG) in November 2011. Your road is being considered as you reside in an area of relatively low concerns for road safety and crime. Your ward Councillors and the Police have been involved in helping us to identify suitable roads, and any that were considered inappropriate for any reason have already been discounted.

Unless most of the residents in your road do not wish the lights to be switched off between midnight and 06.00, the next step of the process is to present a list of all the roads proposed for the scheme to the next available Council Cabinet meeting. Councillors will then make a final decision to approve the scheme which would start shortly after.

Please share your views with us by visiting our website at the following address where you can give your response electronically and help us to reduce postage and administration costs. If this is not possible, a pre-paid postage response card is enclosed that can be used for your reply.

Please note that all responses should be returned by 6 April 2012.

Yours faithfully

Julian McLaughlin

Head of Transportation Services

APPENDIX B (Page 2/4)

Part Night Lighting - Background Information

The Borough of Poole is committed to reducing its carbon footprint and seeks to reduce carbon emissions by 25% by April 2013. Street lighting accounts for approximately a quarter of the Borough’s entire carbon footprint and is an area where potential savings need to be considered.

There are around 13,000 street lights in residential roads in Poole. These consume approximately 2,500 tons of carbon (CO²) per year and cost the Borough some £450,000 in electricity costs (at current contracted energy rates for 2011/12).

Converting a street light in a residential road to part night lighting (where lights are switched off from approximately midnight to 6am) saves around 98 kgs of carbon per annum and £17.50 in cost per light.

We are currently investigating the possibility of switching around 3,000 street lights in Poole to part night lighting over the next 3 years (approximately 1,000 lights per year). This could achieve annual savings of 294 tons of carbon and £52,500 in costs (which represents an overall saving of 11% for each).

In total, our street lighting in Poole (including lights on residential roads and main traffic routes) is expected to consume some £700,000 of electricity this year producing around 4,800 tonnes of carbon. Along with residential areas, we are also investigating the possibility of part night lighting or dimming of lights on main traffic routes in an attempt to provide further carbon and cost savings.

Other Options Already Considered

The option to reduce street lighting and our carbon footprint has been discussed at many Council meetings over the past two years. Councillors have raised issues and offered suggestions for alternative measures such as using more energy efficient bulbs, dimming lights, switching alternate lights off and so on. We have explored these options and they are not feasible or viable for wide scale introduction at this time for a number of reasons.