Street Lighting (Residential Areas)

Chris Heaton-Harris Excerpts

Thursday 17th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Hammond]

The hon. Gentleman has made his speech, and if he will forgive me, I am now setting out the Government’s overall responsibility and the liabilities and duties of county councils. I am setting out the situation, as he did, and if he will wait a few minutes longer, I will make some comments on the Government’s response. It is important to set out the case, so that we can understand it and so that we can all agree on what is actually happening. That is what I am attempting to do.

I have just made the point that, in response to criticism, the county council carried out a further consultation. The chief executives of all of the county’s borough and district councils were sent letters and invited to meetings on street policy. Written responses were received from three borough councils in Northamptonshire, including Corby, which asked that the lights be put back on in crime or accident hot spots. I think that the hon. Gentleman would acknowledge that the county council has addressed some of those concerns, and that changes were made to the policy as a result, specifically in regard to the reduction of repair times, as well as to switching the lights back on.

During the switch-off period across Northamptonshire, the public were invited to submit appeals if they felt that the proposed policy was not being correctly applied. In theory, that appeal period was due to end in September 2011, but in practice it was extended until December 2012. During that period, the council considered some 4,000 appeals and, as a result, nearly 1,000 street lights were turned back on.

I understand that the leader of Northamptonshire county council met the leader of Corby borough council—I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman was present at that meeting—to try to come to some arrangement on the street lights in Corby, and offered to switch back on any lights that the borough council wanted to be kept on, so long as the borough provided a 50% funding contribution. I also understand that, although the borough council has made a certain amount of noise, it has not yet taken up that offer.

[Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)]

My constituents were affected in the same way as Corby residents, but a number of parishes across my constituency pay for their own street lighting. I have thus received almost as many letters complaining that people were having to pay twice for street lighting across the county as I did from those complaining about switching off the lights in inappropriate places.

[Stephen Hammond]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting point.

Before I leave Northamptonshire, it is worth saying—and it is important to point out—that the reduced energy usage that the change in policy will have yielded by the end of March 2013 is expected to be approximately 10,500 tonnes of carbon saving, and there will be annual savings in excess of 5,000 tonnes in the future.