Street Lighting Upgrade
The Parish Council intends to upgrade the standard of street lighting for a large part of the village. The cost of doing this will require a 10 year loan which will increase the precept levied by the Council on our residents. This notice seeks your views on this course of action. The Parish Council is responsible for the cost of electricity and maintenance for the street lighting in most areas of the village, the exceptions being the housing developments in Dower Park and Chase, Carrs Meadow, Escrick Park Gardens and Woodlands which are maintained by North Yorkshire County Council.
The annual electricity bill for this lighting is approx. £2000 and is the single largest expenditure by the Council. For many years these lighting columns have required little or no maintenance apart from changing of the fluorescent tubes and fittings. However, in 2010 we began to see a series of failures in the columns themselves with one on Skipwith Road failing completely, two on The Glade showing cracking and a further concrete column in Dower Chase showing the same problem. The Council decided to ask the experts at North Yorkshire County Council to look at the problem and their report was received in September 2013.
The report stated that all of the concrete columns must be replaced as the design of these did not meet current safety standards. For the same reason, all lighting on wooden poles should be replaced. Lastly, although the steel columns were of an acceptable standard, the lanterns would be obsolete in 2015 and should be replaced with modern low energy units.
North Yorkshire County Council also provided budgetary figures for the replacement costs of both columns and lanterns. A small group of Councillors calculated the costs of carrying out these strong recommendations and the total sum is £22,750.
The Parish Council had a precept (our annual income from Selby District Council) at that time of £11,000, so clearly a loan would be required to achieve this. Fortunately, public bodies have access to very good fixed interest rate loans but the net effect is still a borrowing cost in the region off £2,500 per annum for a ten year period.
The benefits to the village would be considerable. One of the most frequent complaints we receive at the Parish Council is the poor quality of the lighting, especially in the primary routes of Main Street, Skipwith Road and Carr Lane. Modern lighting columns are LED and provide a much brighter light using 40 watts per bulb than the old style units which use 80 watts, and of course this will significantly reduce electricity consumption for these units. Parishioners can see how the new style of columns look and work by visiting Carrs Meadow as these have been replaced in the last year by North Yorkshire County Council.
Our next stage is to obtain quotations from providers of street lighting for this work. Once we have determined the actual cost we can apply for the loan and arrange for the work to be carried out which is likely to be during the course of next year.
If you have any comments to make on this scheme or any further questions, can you please email to lighting@escrick.org or write to the Clerk at 19 Dower Chase YO19 6JF before 28th October 2014 in order that we can discuss the responses at the November Parish Council meeting.