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New street lighting


russ

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Oh well, looks like i've hit a brick wall here.

Nope no brick wall, you do not have a "minority" hobby, you have a situation where the streetlighting has blocked access to your perfectly legitimate amenity. All you are asking for is that suitable shielding be allowed to be placed on the lights, I'd ask for the council to install simple shields (ie black plastic card in the light or similar...) to allow you to continue to use your land.

Failing that you can ask if you can install yourself...

Have you contacted your local Lighting Officer?

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By all accounts he is the lighting officer. I've had a couple of emails from the lighting deptartment, and can only presume this EH chap was sent to have a nose around on their behalf.

I'll see what he has to say if i get to chat to him, but his attitude was rather off when speaking to the GF.

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Bizarrely i just finished typing this reply and i got a phone call...

So eseentially they are happy that the lights are compliant, however the EH chap isn't strictly happy with light housing as that design tends to refract the light all over the shop rather than in a targetted manner.

So his idea is to look at shielding the lamps away from the properties so that only the path that they are designed to cover will be lit.

There is one small snag... the lights may not yet have been adopted by the council, if they have then no problems the changes will made, if they aren't adopted then I/they will have to wait.

So not all doom and gloom, and once i got chatting to him he seemed quite interested and happy with my suggestions.

So to everyone else out there with LP problems talk to your council, they might well help!

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Oh well, looks like i've hit a brick wall here.

Join the club...

I know there are various laws to protect residents, homeowners, the environment, etc but councils do willingly and knowingly ignore or contravene them regularly. Especially our local council.

They often 'get around' such issues by making one off payments to various interest groups in order to redress the balance. i.e. one off payment to various nature conservation groups was made when the council gave the go-ahead to destroy and build over several badger setts, bird nests and bat roosts.

At the risk of sounding all political - I am not optimistic about the future of effective local government as long as it continues to ostracize conscientious voters by slapping them in the face every chance it gets.

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One thing to add - the whole of Hampshire is getting replacement lights.

They'll be coming to my town in 2012/2013... The contractor is Southern Electric Contracting and if you call them they'll be happy to discuss the job with you. New LED lights, every old style light will eventually be replaced.

More info here: Hampshire Street Lighting Services

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It's worth checking which council is doing the lights.

In my town I was concerned when I noticed a whole load of replacement lamp columns were being put up along the main street (the bare new columns are there, but they haven't put the lamps on yet!), and was worried that they'd start replacing the ones down my street (which aren't too bad). I checked with the county council, and it turns out that the main street ones are being done by the County Council, but my street is the responsibility of the District Council which 'currently' has no plans to 'upgrade' my street.

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Seems to me we need to club together and make one of the e-petitions on the government's website. Including references to all research regarding crime statistics vs. lighting. Costings, carbon footprints and light pollution.

And get as many people as possible to sign as possible!

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I think that the number of people who want MORE street lighting will outnumber those who don't. Personally, I would rather see the potholes in the road at night than the milky way - and there are nearly as many potholes as stars in Dorset!

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Hey i don't mind street lighting, so long as it's appropriate and not excessive. As the EH chap said when speaking to him, the design of the light cover in my area was woeful and it difracted the light all over the shop, and if it was his choice he'd have less pretty but more useful light covers used.

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I think that the number of people who want MORE street lighting will outnumber those who don't.
I fear that you're right about that. I wouldn't want this whole thing to backfire, and we end up with even more street lighting because the 'big society' wants it.
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Try playing the environmental and wildlife conservation card. Overly bright lights attract moths which make them easier targets for bats and nocturnal birds who feed off them. Also bright lights lead to sleep depravation if they invade your bedroom at night, this can also have an adverse effect on birds as the levels in light increase the birds who think spring is coming from the raised levels start to build nests and lay eggs earlier in the year. As a consequence chicks hatch from eggs before the normal food supply is available and their parents find it hard to feed them.

I remember a few years ago something like this happening and Blue **** who feed their young exclusively on caterpillers were unable to find enough to feed their young and the chicks died in droves from starvation.

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On the topic of street lights - and the change from the old orange ones to the new 'brighter' ones: the light they emit is definitely a different colour. So... do light filters designed for the old street light still work?

post-18683-133877558749_thumb.jpg

If the outgoing "light pollution" falls into that orange-ish bracket, expect the newer bracket to be much, much wider as the light is more "white" than before.

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A presentation from the CfdS suggested playing down the Astromomer-angle, which is purely lack of enjoyment of land/amenity, as the sky in this country is not legally protected; and suggested playing up the 'can't sleep at night/trespass' line - which is.

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Hi,

The old sodium lamp outside my house was replaced yesterday gone is the warm glow across my drive now replaced with the equivalent of a security light. Looking out from the front bedroom window the surface of the drive looks like daylight and is painful to look at the reflected light.

These seem to have tubes in them but is this just the packaging for the LEDs?

On filter effectiveness I tried direct unaided viewing of the lamp. Un filtered was too painful, lumicon deep sky filter reduced the intensity considerably ( like a neutral density filter) the remaining light was purple ish.

Some letter writing is in order.

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Hi,

The old sodium lamp outside my house was replaced yesterday gone is the warm glow across my drive now replaced with the equivalent of a security light. Looking out from the front bedroom window the surface of the drive looks like daylight and is painful to look at the reflected light.

These seem to have tubes in them but is this just the packaging for the LEDs?

On filter effectiveness I tried direct unaided viewing of the lamp. Un filtered was too painful, lumicon deep sky filter reduced the intensity considerably ( like a neutral density filter) the remaining light was purple ish.

Some letter writing is in order.

Do you have a picture of the light at all? Is it like the ones here?

post-18683-133877559998_thumb.png

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These new broad-spectrum lights are likely to have serious effects on biodiversity as well as astronomers (as a couple of people have already noted). DEFRA have a call out for research into street lighting and biodiversity and I'm part of a group putting in a proposal to compare the effects of lights of different spectra. It'll take a few years for any findings to filter through to policy though so don't hold your breath... by then probably every moth in Hampshire will be dead.

Rob

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Dear All

Being a Hampshire resident I am slightly concerned about this thread and the likelyhood of the whiter lights, so I tried digging. I looked up the CfDS as they should know the story on what is going on.

Having just got off the phone with Bob Mizon of CfDS I hope I can fill in some blanks with regards the new lighting.

Technically the lamps are brighter, but the actual type dims down by 50% or so over the first two years, so yes it's brighter now but it will get more reasonable. Far more importantly they shed almost no light upwards, The new lamp designs are capable of having shields added on all sides, in many cases councils are approaching residents to see if they want the additional shielding. If your council don't do this do approach them, some are asking for payments, others are doing it for free.

Currently they are reducing light pollution by about 1 Magnitude, and this is likely to improve a little more as the lights dim. Reading a report on LPR filters by Christian Buil (author of image processing package IRIS) it seems the filters are capable of buying about 1.5 Magnitudes for imaging, so the new lights will be giving close to LPR performance without the filter.

Also many areas will be turing off all but essential urban lighting after 12pm at night, so whatever lighting you have it looks like things are getting better.

Defra are also looking at this and are now taking light pollution seriously.

It also seems that the new lighting requirments are likely to be entering building regulations at some point, once that happens the battle is more or less won.

Thanks to Bob for his time this evening, and I hope this helps those here.

Darker.. possibly much darker skys!

Derek

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Sounds positive.

At first i was initially skeptic about these being installed locally - as they have around my area. Starting to get impression they're not as bad as initially thought.

Since they're individually controllable by councils they do have ability to dim in certain areas, hence comms with councils now could have a tangiable outcome. Was out the other night and saw them physically dim around 1130pm - thought there was about to be a power cut! With this and better shielding as standard, there is less spillage and better control over use.

When it comes down to choices available, an option of always on with light spill or dimmable with better shielding, the latter does sound to be a better option. There is a lot of speculation/perceptions that these are worse, but having seen them in use and physically dim the other night has started to change my opinion

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  • 1 year later...

Dear All

Being a Hampshire resident I am slightly concerned about this thread and the likelyhood of the whiter lights, so I tried digging. I looked up the CfDS as they should know the story on what is going on.

Having just got off the phone with Bob Mizon of CfDS I hope I can fill in some blanks with regards the new lighting.

Technically the lamps are brighter, but the actual type dims down by 50% or so over the first two years, so yes it's brighter now but it will get more reasonable. Far more importantly they shed almost no light upwards, The new lamp designs are capable of having shields added on all sides, in many cases councils are approaching residents to see if they want the additional shielding. If your council don't do this do approach them, some are asking for payments, others are doing it for free.

Currently they are reducing light pollution by about 1 Magnitude, and this is likely to improve a little more as the lights dim. Reading a report on LPR filters by Christian Buil (author of image processing package IRIS) it seems the filters are capable of buying about 1.5 Magnitudes for imaging, so the new lights will be giving close to LPR performance without the filter.

Also many areas will be turing off all but essential urban lighting after 12pm at night, so whatever lighting you have it looks like things are getting better.

Defra are also looking at this and are now taking light pollution seriously.

It also seems that the new lighting requirments are likely to be entering building regulations at some point, once that happens the battle is more or less won.

Thanks to Bob for his time this evening, and I hope this helps those here.

Darker.. possibly much darker skys!

Derek

I have to say I did panic to see this now going in around the Warsash area!.... my part dark sky site could be trashed. Is there no end to this!!!!

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