New-look lamps to light up the town

Modern street lights in a conservation area have been replaced with heritage-style lamps.

Nottinghamshire County Council halted its street light renewal scheme for Church Street and Easthorpe, Southwell, after complaints that the modern lamps were inappropriate for a conservation area.

The scheme restarted last week when the council started to paint the modern street lights black and replaced six modern lanterns on Church Street, outside Southwell Minster, with heritage-style lamps.

The cost of installing a steel lamp is £850, compared to £1,600 for a heritage style lamps.

The county council would save £18,000 if it replaced all the lights earmaked as part of the scheme with modern steel lamps.

Mr Andy Gregory, a member of Southwell Town Council, which complained about the modern lights, welcomed the move.

He said: “All they needed to do is ask in the first place and it could have avoided this, instead of putting up the lights and taking them down again.

“I’m pleased the county council have done what they said they were going to do and they’ve done it quite quickly too.”

Mr Gregory raised concerns over the cost to taxpayers of replacing the newly-installed lamps.

He said: “It is all taxpayers’ money, not just Southwell taxpayers, because the money comes from the county council and I’m sure they don’t have the money to throw at schemes like these.

“They’ve had to paint the lamp stands and replace the top, which has doubled the workload. Had they thought about it in the first place, we could have had the painted lampstands with the heritage tops put on in one go.

“In these days when people are complaining about the cost of council tax I would have thought the county council would do everything possible to try and save money.”

The county council started to replace 18 street lights along the A612 in Southwell, which were installed in around 1973, in April.

Mr Gregory said the modern silver lights were not suitable for the conservation area.

He said: “I wanted to see the heritage-style lights because it is a sensitive area as a conservation area.

“We want to make it look nice for residents and visitors and 21st Century steel lamp stands would not have been in keeping. They were out of place and inappropriate.

“It was more than 20 years ago that it was decided by the town council that the conservation area should have sympathetic lighting.”

The chairman of the town council’s planning committee, Mr Brendan Haigh, wants to see the heritage fitting extended along Church Street.

He said: “I hope this is the start of the scheme to make street lighting in the conservation area of the town more in keeping with its character.”

A county council spokesman said its street lighting team had identified that street lighting on Church Street, opposite the minster, and on Easthorpe, to its junction with Crew Lane, was structurally unsound.

The sites were included in the council’s capital maintenance programme for 2008/9 and it was intended to have 24 like-for-like replacements.

“However, following a meeting with Southwell Town Council, it was agreed that six heritage-style columns would be placed outside Southwell Minster on Church Street,” said the spokesman.

“This agreement was made following consultation with Nottinghamshire County Council and Newark and Sherwood District Council conservation officers.

“It was also agreed that the remaining 18 standard columns would be painted black and columns yet to be installed from the Market Place end of Church Street to the Normanton Prebend, would be of heritage-style — as these had been successfully been used in an earlier scheme on King Street.”