Warwickshire's "Big Turn Off"

This weekend has seen Warwickshire County Council turn off 80% of it's street lights between the hours of midnight and 530am. Oh my God! Are you serious? Sadly yes, yes I am.

I run a business in Warwick town centre, and, not unlike lots of people in business locally, often struggle with decisions made by the local council. But this decision is County, covering the whole of the county. From Shipston all the way upto Bulkington and the north-shire.I speak to people all over the county daily, and the concensus seems the same.

"Why was the first I am heard about this when the lights actually went off?"

Also,

"How come my street has lights, yet my friend three streets over doesn't?"

So after an evening of these questions and more, I thought I'd see what I could see on the internet. So I googled "Warwick DC lights off", which took me to a map of the county containing every street lamp in the county, and a colour coded key as to which lights were to be turned off overnight.

 http://www.warwickshire.gov.uk/partnightlighting

I posted this map on Twitter, and Facebook, within minutes was receiving messages informing me that the map was not accessible via tablet nor mobile. Super.

I then noticed in the search result the:

Communities Overview & Scrutiny Committee
19 September 2012
Report of the Street Lighting Energy

As much as I didn't want to, I had ten minutes worth of awake time left, so I had a quick read. Worst thing I have done in a while. The report takes a very simple view of a perfect world, one where statistics rule the world, where people are home by midnight, and where picking and choosing extracts from obscure reports 20 years ago actually mean something in today's society.

The most infuriating line in the whole document is

"Addressing the fear of crime
The overwhelming response from the public engagement was negative and
the majority of comments included references to a fear of crime, despite a
lack of compelling evidence."

Firstly, fear of crime, or indeed anything just not need to be justified by evidence. If the council is putting young people, one of whom turned 18 yesterday, off leaving her home because of a very real fear of the dark, or indeed what is waiting in the dark, then imagine what senior citizens are feeling. People on occasion need to leave their home after midnight, be it to get cat food, to pick up a friend in need, to go get a McDonalds, anything. Essentially by turning off these lights, and making people scared to leave their home, the council is putting people under home arrest. Sounds a tad extreme, but it's true.

I am a 35 year old man, I am as fit and as healthy as I have ever been. I carry myself with a certain level of confidence, yet last night when I returned to my business to lock up, I pulled up outside the bar, there was a car behind me with 3 blokes in it, engine running, how was I to know they were staff from Warwick Spice waiting for the screen to clear? I don't mind saying, I was scared.

I went in to the bar, locked up, bolted the gates, secured the doors, all under the flashlight app on my mobile. Walked out of our alleyway into the street, fog, pitch black from the girls school down to the junction by Robbies. Again, my heart rate increased a little. I'm now thinking I must have been mad to have been scared, because there was "no compelling evidence" that anything was going to happen to me.

See my point? Fear is in the eye of the beholder. It cannot be quantified, cannot be dismissed. If I am scared of being outside my business when I am locking up, when I wasn't a few days ago, surely there is something wrong?

I understand that money needs to be saved, but for the minor(in the grand scheme of things) saving made here, could surely be offset somewhere else? For example the £1.5m spent on implementing this new system, there is 3 years before we even see any saving.

Driving one of my staff home Friday night, Saturday morning we talked about how she gets to work, "walk usually". I always insist that the younger staff be collected, or one of the senior staff or I take them home. My staff are like family, but I know that is not the case in every bar/restaurant/nightclub. I would not be comfortable walking along Emscote Road after midnight currently, leave alone a 16 year old girl finishing work in Warwick.

As I am coming to the end of this rant, I realise I have offered no answer, nor alternative. I do not believe there is one. I do not believe that this should have ever been given the go ahead, based solely on the 'fear factor'. Being scared is very real. Whether or not 'statistically' anything worse is going to happen to me, or someone I care about, if the lights are on or off is of little consequence. Fear is not rational, and the people that made this decision should be made to realise that.

With regard to the report, I know a lot of people, and have asked on various media if anyone was asked, or indeed knew about these changes. I will report back when I hear back from people.

The report says that a notice went out with council tax demands, which given that this order passed in September, and the next round of demands is around March time, I hardly think likely. The report says that 361 people responded to whatever material was  banded around. 361 people from a county of more than 200000, well, make of that what you will.

I know this is all very negative, but I have a lot of people I care about living in this area, some who are less than able to fend for themselves, be it from alcohol on a weekend night, or the need to pop to a shop late one night in the only area they can afford to live in. Leamington is not a safe place, we all know that. I would rather between the 200000 people in the county we all pay an extra £2.50 each year to keep our counties lights on.

We all feel like we are not part of decisions made here in Warwick DC, now I feel like we don't have a voice in Warwickshire CC either.

Surely this 'lights off' could have been left until the next round of elections? But as I think Norfolk County Council say in the report, they didn't ask their public, because of the negativity regarding the plan. So they did it anyway.

Sound familiar?