Highways and Transport Cabinet Panel

HERTFORDSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL Agenda Item No HIGHWAYS AND TRANSPORT CABINET PANEL TUESDAY 11th JANUARY 2011 AT 10.00 AM 4 STREET LIGHTING STRATEGY

Report of the Director Environment and Commercial Services

Author: Mike Younghusband Tel: 01707 356551

Executive Member: Stuart Pile

1 Purpose of report

1.1 To seek the Panel’s views on the proposed street lighting strategy, which includes detailed proposals for part-night lighting and proposals for a basic operational service.

2 Summary

2.1 This report sets out detailed recommendations for a street lighting strategy, predominantly based on ‘part-night lighting’, following the requests from the November 2010 Panel and Cabinet meetings.

2.2 Following a desk top exercise a set of exception criteria has been identified.

2.3 The proposed hours of de-illumination are mid-night to 6am.

2.4 A two year project to convert to part-night lighting has been proposed alongside a consultation strategy. A capital bid has been submitted to seek the necessary funding.

2.5 The focus of achieving savings within the street lighting service thus far has been on de-illumination. Further savings can be achieved by reviewing operational service levels. It is recommended that the County Council’s street lighting service ceases to operate in accordance with national standards and switches to an environment where the objective for the service is the maintenance of purely ‘safe and operational’ street lighting with no frills.

3 Conclusions

3.1 The Panel is requested to note and comment upon:  The recommendation that officers develop a formal, detailed lighting strategy based on the predominantly part-night lighting proposals outlined in the report.  The consultation strategies outlined in paragraphs 8 and 9 of this report

DGT ITS Paper 07/05/2018 1  The proposal to move to a basic operational service, based on the principles of ‘safe and operational’ aimed at delivering Council for the Future [C4F] savings as set out in paragraphs 9.2 – 9.12 of this report

4. Part-Night Lighting Strategy

4.1 Following discussion at the November Highways & Transport Panel, Cabinet on 29th November 2010 decided that street lights should be turned off completely where there is little or no footfall and part night lighting is likely to be the best option in urban areas, although the time at which lights are to be turned off is still to be agreed; and that officers draw up detailed plans for the Highways & Transport Cabinet Panel to consider in January 2011.

4.2 The light switching will not be controlled by clocks, but electronic photo cells, which have an accuracy of approximately +/- 15 minutes. It is recommended that the hours of de-illumination are mid-night to 6am and that they are standard countywide. The photo cell timings are factory set, so cannot be changed once they are installed.

5. Welwyn Garden City Pilot Study 5.1 Welwyn Garden City was selected for a pilot study aimed at identifying the technical processes that need to be adopted and at testing the broad exception criteria proposals presented to the November 2010 Highways and Transport Panel.

5.2 Welwyn Garden City town centre was chosen as it is local to Highways House. The sample area included 1,227 lighting columns or approx 1% of all Hertfordshire County Council street lighting columns.

5.3 Given that the preferred strategy is based on part-night lighting, rather than full de-illumination a fairly strict approach to exception criteria was applied.

5.4 Each column and the intentions in respect of it was identified on a set of plans to exemplify the criteria and the detailed points of principle that needed to be determined. This plan is available within the Member’s Room, [Room 103] at County Hall, Hertford.

5.5 Based on the application of the criteria the study revealed that:  74% of street lights are amenable to part-night lighting  26% of the current lighting columns need to be retained in full night operation.

5.6 This result can be compared to the Highways &Transport Panel report prepared before this more detailed study, which assumed that the proportion of lights that could be de-illuminated in some form was in the range of 43% to 62%. This assessment was based on a direction of travel that lights would either be ‘fully on’ or ‘fully off’.

DGT ITS Paper 07/05/2018 2 5.7 The local members were consulted on the Welwyn Garden City pilot as part of the desk top study to help test the emerging principles and provide useful feed back on local points of detail. Should the part-night lighting project and its attendant criteria be approved, the project team will re-engage with those local members for Welwyn Garden City and the plans will be updated to reflect the application of the finally agreed criteria.

6 Exception criteria 6.1 The exception criteria determine the extent of potential change and therefore the extent of achievable savings. The exception criteria provide a risk appraisal for each street light considered for change.

6.2 Given that the preferred strategy is to apply part-night lighting in urban areas, it is suggested that strict exception criteria can be applied more rigorously than if they were to be applied to a full de-illumination strategy. Clearly, the greater the rigour, the greater the long term energy and cost savings

6.3 It is recommended that street lighting is left in full night lighting in the circumstances scheduled in the table below.

Full Night Lighting Feature Comments Bollards This equipment is generally linked to Beacons traffic hazards and there is only Regulatory illuminated traffic signs marginal scope for savings through de- illumination Subways Approx 5,130 subway lights Tunnels Baldock tunnel Town centres Immediate area of concentrated shopping districts with a night time economy CCTV coverage areas Areas need to be defined locally through consultation with Police and District Councils Areas of high crime Areas to be defined exactly rather than at ward or neighbourhood level. Traffic route hazards To meet statutory requirement and/or proven significant accident risk

A, B & C class road junctions Where there is significant accident risk & recommendation by police discussions

DGT ITS Paper 07/05/2018 3 6.4 There will be some routes that have special, local circumstances for which the cost saving of the change to part-night lighting is minor, but the potential impact is large. It is therefore recommended that the local member is consulted on whether they consider a switch to part-night lighting is appropriate, or not in the following instances: Local Member Consultation Local alleyways and remote footpaths Well used routes after midnight and before 6am. Small villages and hamlets Where there are less than 10 lights in the settlement

6.5 Given the preferred strategy is based predominantly on part-night lighting rather than full de-illumination, there are a number of locations that do not need to be included within the exception criteria. Thus it is recommended that the following locations are generally excluded from the exception criteria and that local members are not consulted on their being made subject to part-night lighting:

Part-Night Lighting Residential road junctions Areas surrounding emergency services Areas surrounding registered care homes Areas surrounding schools Principal pedestrian access routes to transport hubs Historic or cherished equipment and other special design apparatus Footpaths running parallel to, but remote (more than 5m) from the carriageway Footpaths adjacent to fields, wooded areas, un-fenced open land etc Paths through parks, churchyards, others

7. Full De-illumination

7.1 A number of lit sections of traffic routes have been assessed for suitability for full de-illumination. Here all lights will be extinguished except those associated with road hazards (junctions, roundabouts etc).

7.2 After consideration of local traffic accident histories, an initial list of 16 locations was reduced to ten schemes suitable for on-site assessment. These sites will be visited and the potential to de-illuminate confirmed and savings estimates created.

7.3 The purpose of reporting the early stages of this study is to highlight that the number of columns on Hertfordshire’s inter-urban traffic routes is quite modest and, for those suitable for de-illumination the number is more modest still.

DGT ITS Paper 07/05/2018 4 7.4 There may be small villages and hamlets, which are suitable for full de- illumination. It is proposed that officers will make decisions on these in consultation with the local member and the Director Environment and Commercial Services.

Full De-illumination Inter-Urban Traffic Routes Except for sections with hazards Small villages and hamlets Where there are less than 10 lights in the settlement

8 Implementation 8.1 A bid for capital funding based on the Highways &Transport Panel Option 3 has been submitted to finance the part-night lighting project between 2011/12 and 2012/13. In delivering to this programme the energy and cost savings will be fully achieved by 2013/14 and the project could be completed within the current highways contract (thus avoiding a complex hand over to a different contract).

8.2 However, the programme and the integrity of the project will be very much dictated by the public and local member engagement strategy.

8.3 It is recommended that local members and the police are consulted on prepared plans to test the correctness of the proposals, not the validity of the criteria. It is recommended that all other stakeholders are informed, but not consulted.

9. Operational Service Levels

9.1 The focus of achieving savings within the street lighting service thus far has been on de-illumination. Further savings can be achieved by reviewing operational service levels.

9.2 It is recommended that the Hertfordshire County Council street lighting service ceases to operate in accordance with national standards set out in the “Well – Lit Highways Code of Practice for Highway Lighting Management” (“the Code of Practice”) and switches to an environment where the objective for the service is the maintenance of purely ‘safe and operational’ street lighting with no frills. The provisions of the Code of Practice are not mandatory but may be a relevant consideration should the Council be subject to legal challenge. It is therefore recommended that the Council’s strategy identify departures from the Code of Practice and set out the Council’s reasons for them.

9.3 The following proposals taken collectively could save approximately:  £1.7m revenue against the current £8.34m budget  £400,000 capital against the current £1.58m budget

9.4 Ad hoc column replacements Only columns recommended for immediate attention are replaced, with all other columns referred for replacement at a later date.

DGT ITS Paper 07/05/2018 5 9.5 Replacement Schemes Currently replacement schemes are developed as a consequence of a number of existing columns located within the same street requiring replacement (these being identified via the structural testing programme). The strategy has been to incorporate the replacement of adjacent columns in that street at the same time, irrespective of potential remaining life. It is proposed that only columns recommended for immediate attention are replaced. ‘Non-reds’ are not to be replaced. This can mean that not all columns in a street will match.

9.6 Service Inspections Currently, every piece of street lighting apparatus is visited on an annual basis and a visual inspection is undertaken to assess the condition of the column. With the lighting stock subject to other forms of inspection processes such as electrical and non-destructive structural testing, it is reasonable to stop this activity.

9.7 General Maintenance These works include ongoing day-to-day apparatus repair works, including the replacement of failed and damaged components (but excluding the full replacement of damaged columns). This budget also covers the night time inspection regime. The contractor is subject to a Key Performance Indicators [KPI] performance target whereby the proportion of operational lighting units should, at any one time, equate to 98% and, as a consequence, has processes in place in an effort to achieve these targets. Hertfordshire County Council could relax the existing performance criteria and dispense with the need for the contractor to undertake night time inspection works. The source of all lighting faults would then lie with reports from the general public, police and others. It is also proposed that reported faults are attended to within ten business days of receipt, as per the maintenance efficiency proposal also being considered by this Panel. Contractor performance can be monitored by measuring the number of reported faults attended within the required response time.

9.8 Electrical testing The cyclic testing has just been extended from a six yearly cycle to an eight year cycle, which means that one eighth of existing stock is tested annually. However, the requirements set out within the national standards have recently been revised with no frequency of inspection specified, so that it is for the Authority to develop a testing regime based on its knowledge of the existing apparatus and its condition. Hertfordshire County Council can review the test results from previous inspection programmes and develop a revised schedule of specific frequencies, based on the intelligence held within the Asset Management System.

DGT ITS Paper 07/05/2018 6 9.9 Structural testing By reviewing the current structural testing process including both the selection of apparatus to be tested and the testing technique(s) used it should be possible to develop a revised robust and economic strategy that should satisfy the guidance set out within the standards.

9.10 Bulk clean and change Such programmes were initially developed to minimise reactive repair responses to reported faults. Under a ‘safe and operational’ regime there is no longer any requirement for these preventative works to be carried out.

9.11 Consultancy support

Hertfordshire County Council currently commission the Design Team to undertake works associated with the client role. The Design Team facilitates the development and management of the majority of works processes passed onto the Works Team. With the implementation of the safe and operational strategy, a considerable tranche of the Design Team’s existing workload will cease and instead will result in a performance monitoring requirement.

9.12 Planned maintenance Some minor works are carried out above and beyond the core maintenance service, such as the provision of shields. It is proposed to undertake a review of actual works commissioned via this budget over the last twelve month period with the aim of differentiating between essential and non-essential activities. The intention would be to cease funding all non-essential activity out of core budgets and channel such activity for prioritisation within the discretionary programmes.

10 Financial Implications

10.1 A capital bid has been submitted to seek funding for the introduction of part-night lighting. The two year project will cost approximately £4.56m and deliver an estimated £1.36m saving per year as well as avoiding some costs associated with carbon tax escalating from £50,000 in 2011/12 to £430,000 by 2020.

10.2 The proposals to deliver a ‘safe and operational’ service taken collectively could save approximately:  £1.7m revenue against the current £8.34m budget  £400,000 capital against the current £1.58m budget

10.3 The ‘Safe and Operational’ service savings will contribute to the C4F declared savings for the general highway service, but they can be considered to be on top of the part-night lighting savings. These savings may not all be achievable within the current contract arrangements.

DGT ITS Paper 07/05/2018 7 10.4 If the 'safe and operational' approach is supported by Cabinet then officers can use it as a basis for tender discussions with the bidders, which will also help refine the approach and officers can drive any savings not already achieved through the new contracts when they start in 2012/13.

10.5 This Panel is also receiving a paper on highway maintenance efficiencies [Agenda Item 5] associated with the Integrated Planning Process. The paper will include some street lighting efficiency proposals, which can be delivered from 2011/12 with relatively little pain to the service and within the existing contract. The street lighting savings totalling £339,000 are against the 2010/11 budget, but these initiatives will eventually be superseded by the step change 'safe & operational’ service. As such the £339,000 savings should not be considered to be on top of the potential £2.1m savings associated with the 'safe and operational service'

DGT ITS Paper 07/05/2018 8