Street lights to be overhauled (From York Press)

Can we please stop calling Amey the Council's lighting partner.

ISeeEverything wrote:
Can we please stop calling Amey the Council's lighting partner.

Too right..she's getting sick of it..

I'll probably regret adding this post as soon as I hit send - but as the Cabinet Member responsible for this programme I feel compelled to say something.

This is very disappointing coverage of what is a fairly major story - significant coverage over recent weeks has been given to the fact that many street lights across the City have been cut down on safety grounds - a legacy of many years of underinvestment. That's fair enough and a good story to report on.

But the programme we are announcing to resolve that problem which has generated so much coverage is a £1 million investment in our street lighting columns - the biggest since the Victorian era. To put it into context, that's a 20 fold increase in the street lighting budget in a single year.
The programme will cover all of the lights that have already been cut down, plus a further 150 lights that need to be re-inspected within the next year. It will take around 9 weeks to complete, rather than the more than 10 years it would have taken, had we stuck to the budget we inherited.
The new columns will have white light fittings - which are far better for preventing crime as they allow usable images for prosecutions on CCTV, unlike the yellow lights they are replacing.

Surely that story is worth more than a 101 word snippet article.

101 snippet is more than enough. I''d be more interested in how and who has allowed more than 1000's lights to be left structurally unsafe for so long.
Have you ever heard of maintenance?
Don't see much need for pats on the backs for a problem that has been left to manifest itself. No thanks for problems created internally.

Shows how out of touch Ann Reid and her cronies are, last week claiming no replacement plans had been made and no funding made available.
Yet clearly when in power the same group had failed to maintain them and only had a budget of £130k for replacements.

Dafydd Williams wrote:
I'll probably regret adding this post as soon as I hit send - but as the Cabinet Member responsible for this programme I feel compelled to say something.

This is very disappointing coverage of what is a fairly major story - significant coverage over recent weeks has been given to the fact that many street lights across the City have been cut down on safety grounds - a legacy of many years of underinvestment. That's fair enough and a good story to report on.

But the programme we are announcing to resolve that problem which has generated so much coverage is a £1 million investment in our street lighting columns - the biggest since the Victorian era. To put it into context, that's a 20 fold increase in the street lighting budget in a single year.
The programme will cover all of the lights that have already been cut down, plus a further 150 lights that need to be re-inspected within the next year. It will take around 9 weeks to complete, rather than the more than 10 years it would have taken, had we stuck to the budget we inherited.
The new columns will have white light fittings - which are far better for preventing crime as they allow usable images for prosecutions on CCTV, unlike the yellow lights they are replacing.

Surely that story is worth more than a 101 word snippet article.

Indeed. Will the new white light lanterns be LED, like those on Water End, or just using screw-type lamps (like at Duncombe Place) where a shortage of white light lamps on the van could lead to a Sodium lamp being fitted instead when a white light lamp fails? (like at Duncombe place!)

The main problem will be getting the electric connections provider to pull their finger out and not take 3 or 4 months to connect a single column to the juice.

A lot of the columns which failed are 1960's stock, which was life-expired in the 1990's so is 15-20 years overdue for replacement. I must admit myself that when going round York there isn't really many streets where you can see loads of new columns, it's mainly replacements for ones damaged by car collisions, interspersed with the 1960's stuff.

Is there also going to be further development of the fluorescent lighting that was installed on the main roads through Acomb to include other areas?