PLANS to turn street lights off in the early hours of the morning will not be halted despite a coroner’s concerns about the scheme, the county council has said.
The council has been trialling the scheme in Maldon and Uttlesford and plans to start introducing it in other parts of the county after consulting residents and the emergency services.
But coroner Eleanor McGann said at the inquest of Grant Barry, 31, who was killed after being hit by a Land Rover on a pitch black road in Stapleford Abbotts last year that the policy was “inherently dangerous” given cases like this.
She also criticised the lack of street lighting in the centre of Stapleford Abbotts, adding: “This is a residential area. Why is there no street lighting at all?”
She said she would ask the council to review its energy and cost-saving scheme.
Tracey Chapman, the council’s Conservative cabinet member for highways, did not return the Guardian’s calls, but in a statement given via a council spokesman, she said: “The decision to introduce part-night street-lighting is not one that the county council has taken lightly.
“We have had trial schemes operating in Maldon and Uttlesford since 2007 and during that time we have seen no increase in crime or road collisions.”
The spokesman added: “The decision to introduce part-night lighting has been taken and it’s happening and will go ahead.”
He said where there was a demand for street lights to be installed in a town or village, the council would look into that, but did not know if people in Stapleford Abbotts had requested lighting.
Thomas Smith-Hughes, the leader of the council’s opposition Liberal Democrat group, said his party had been worried about the scheme when it was first introduced a few years ago.
“My party was very concerned about this at the time because basically, it was going to have very few exceptions,” he said. “Since then, two pilots have happened and the county council has done a huge scrutiny exercise and looked at it in considerable depth.”
He said the council would decide where there should be an exception to the plans or where alternate lights could be turned off after consulting with residents and the police.
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