We’ve been asked by the parish council to circulate the following …

County Council to dim all Milton street lights and turn off almost 90% after midnight

Milton Parish Council seek your views – online survey

The County Council as part of their ongoing cuts propose to dim all street lights. They also propose to turn off almost 90% of the lights between midnight and 6am. This will affect 41 Cambridgeshire communities from April 2016 and will save the County £272,000.

Milton Parish Council were told in mid July that Milton is one of the communities that will be affected by this proposal as we now have the new street lights that can be dimmed and/or switched off.

There are 360 street lights listed in Milton and the County Council is proposing to dim all of them by 40%, and turn off 313 of them after midnight.

The only lights that will remain on after midnight (but will be dimmed) will be these:

• All the lights in Cambridge Rd, Ely Rd and Landbeach Rd. (35 lights)
• All the lights in High Street (apart from columns L14WGQ, L20WGQ & L21WGQ which will be turned off). (5 lights)
• Benet Close – Column no. L1WGY (1 light)
• Butt Lane – Column no. L1WGK (1 light)
• Coles Rd – Column no. L1WHT (1 light)
• Crane Industrial Estate – Column no. CC1 (1 light)
• The Rowans – Column no. L1WAQ & L60WAQ (2 lights)
• Willow Crescent – Column no. L5WGU (1 light)

Our initial survey shows that in addition some lights on linking passages are not on the county lists at all whilst others are and have been listed to be turned off so this will need further clarification.

Milton Parish Council could ask for specific lights to remain on after midnight but we would have to pay for them.

The cost to the Parish Council would be around £4,000 per year (£12 per light plus admin fee).

It is likely that as more cuts are made, parish councils will be asked to cover the cost of other services and we are mindful of this and will have to decide priorities. Presently a Band D property in Milton contributes approximately £50 per year (This figure appears to be an underestimate: the actual figure is £73.63 for 2015-6. The total “precept” is £129,000 so based on the £4,000 figure this would mean an increase of about 3% or £2.28 per annum for a band D household) to the Parish Council to cover the cost of running the wide range of services that are provided here.

As the cost of keeping the lights on would have to be added to parish rate we would like to have your views.

We would be very grateful if you could respond to the four questions in our online survey which can be found at this link:

www.surveymonkey.com/r/K7JK5VL

Closing date for responses: 27th September 2015

This information will also be published in Milton Village View with a paper version of the questionnaire.

Jane Coston
Chairman of Milton Parish Council