Following a consultation, Hampshire County Council has decided to proceed with implementing part night lighting.
Report Here. Residential areas will see lighting switched off between 1am and 4am, with the exception of where there are speed humps or pedestrian crossings. This is quite a short window of darkness compared with other part night schemes across the country (only 3 hours), but results in an 8.1% energy saving over existing. Part night lighting will commence from 1st April 2019.
Here are results to the first three questions of the consultation. The full results can be found
here.
1. To what extent do you agree or disagree with the proposal to turn off street lights for a minimum of two hours a night, every night?Strongly Agree - 37%
Agree - 29%
Neither Agree or Disagree - 3%
Disagree - 9%
Strongly Disagree - 21%
Not sure - 1%
2. For how many hours would you prefer street lights to be switched off during the night?2 hours - 17%
3 hours - 23%
4 hours - 41%
5 hours - 2%
6 hours - 2%
7 hours - 0%
8 hours - 1%
No Opinion - 4%
Other - 10%
3. What is your preferred switch off time?00.00 (Midnight) - 31%
01.00 - 36%
02:00 - 25%
No Opinion - 4%
Other - 4%
As can be seen from these responses, Hampshire have done very well to strike a balance from the consultation, and by no means could be accused of ploughing ahead with something people don't want. They really have listened.
Apparently, the policy on lighting had changed since I last checked anyway. The current policy is as follows:
Residential roads:Dusk to 23:30 - dimming by 45%
23:30 to 05:30 - dimming by 65%
05:30 to dawn - dimming by 45%
Main roads:Dusk to 23:30 - dimming by 25%
23:30 to 05:30 - dimming by 50%
05:30 to dawn - dimming by 30%
CosmoPolis:Dusk to dawn - dimming by 40%
This represented higher levels of dimming being implemented for an extra hour per night compared with the previous regime (except for CosmoPolis), with main road dimming approaching dawn being increased from 25% at the same time. So Hampshire had really squeezed as much out of dimming as they sustainably could.