Villages in Darkness

Those of you who have been up between midnight and 05:00 will have noticed that from 24th March Surrey County Council has switched off many of the street lights in Woking to save monies.

The Council recognises that some residents may wish to request a review of the decision to include (or exclude) some street lights in the part-night lighting programme. Surrey has therefore developed a process to enable residents to request a review of the part-night lighting in their street. More information can be found on their website.

Residential roads were assessed by the Council’s Engineers to ensure they are suitable for part-night lighting and are also being reviewed by the Council’s Road Safety Team and Surrey Police.

The Council developed a set of ‘avoidance criteria’ and if one or more of these are present in any given road, the lights would not be switched off (in the case of traffic calming and formal pedestrian crossings, some lights may be turned off with those closest to them being left on). Lights on roads which are considered to be traffic routes will not be switched off.

• Traffic Routes – this will predominantly be A, B and C classified roads, however some lower trafficked roads in this group may be included and equally some higher trafficked unclassified roads may be excluded by this criterion
• Town centres where this is a night time economy
• Where traffic calming measures (speed cushions or humps, chicanes etc.) or formal pedestrian crossings such as zebra crossings are present and they require illumination
• Locations where Council or Police CCTV is in operation to reduce crime
• Locations where the Council’s Road Safety Team or Surrey Police believe that implementing part-night lighting could have an adverse effect on either crime or road safety
• In cases where buses or trains run beyond the proposed switch off time, roads will be assessed and may either be excluded from part-night lighting or have a later switch off time.

More information on part-night lighting, please visit the Surrey County Council website.