Campaigners have welcomed Cambridge City Council’s offer to contribute financially to the cost of the city’s streetlights, as the County Council votes to go ahead with its planned switch-off between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m., despite widespread resistance.

Speaking to Varsity, Labour MP for Cambridge Daniel Zeichner, who had strongly criticised the proposals, said that he “welcomed” the City Council’s intervention, but claimed that the city “shouldn’t be having to do this”, accusing the Conservative-led County Council of “passing the buck”.

Zeichner added that students had been in contact with him to voice their “safety fears” following the proposed switch-off, and accused the County Council of “taking no notice” of the fact that “Cambridge is a 24/7 city”.

CUSU Women’s Officer Charlotte Chorley told Varsity that the “strength of the student-led campaign” against the cuts demonstrated the importance of the issue, and welcomed the City Council’s intervention as “a fantastic testament to the voices of those campaigners”.

She described turning off streetlights in “densely populated” areas as “a matter of public safety and private fear”, arguing that “walking home in the dark, late at night” should never have even been regarded as “a viable option” for residents and students.

Cambridge’s former Liberal Democrat MP, Julian Huppert, had also campaigned for the lights to be kept on, and told Varsity that he was “delighted” that “there has now been some reprieve”.

He described street lighting as “particularly” important in student areas such as central Cambridge, where people are “likely to be walking late at night”, and said that these people “deserve to be safe and to feel safe” while doing so.

Huppert also condemned the County Council’s planned changes to street lighting as an “expensive and inflexible PFI project”, claiming that “they still seem determined to switch off other lights around Cambridgeshire”.

However, in a statement, Conservative County Councillor Roger Hickford, Chairman of the Highways and Community Infrastructure Committee, said: “In an ideal world we would not want to turn off street lights. However, with the recent announcement by Government we now have to find an extra £5 million on top of the £41 million we have already had to save for 2015/16.”

“We have been working closely with authorities across Cambridgeshire to find local solutions and understand the various needs of the areas. Many councils have come forward with offers of paying for lights and we welcome Cambridge City Council’s suggestion which will be looked at by Councillors.”

The County Council’s Highways and Community Infrastructure Committee passed the motion to cut overnight street lighting in a meeting on Tuesday. Roads affected will include Sidgwick Avenue, Grange Road, West Road, and Trinity Lane.

Liberal Democrat Councillor, Amanda Taylor, introduced an amendment to keep lights on throughout the night, with her Liberal Democrat colleagues arguing that the switch-off was a “retrograde step”. However, the vote on this amendment was tied, with Councillor Hickford ruling against it with his casting vote.

In the meeting, Vice-chair of the Committee, UKIP Councillor Peter Reeve, called the protests against the switch-off “a disgrace to the people of Cambridgeshire”, and condemned them as “gesture politics” that were not backed up by the facts.
Conservative Councillor Bill Hunt echoed Reeve, calling attempts to keep the lights on throughout the night “cheap political point scoring”, claiming that he hoped for a “victory for common sense”.

The County Council currently spends £270,000 each year on powering Cambridge’s 10,398 streetlights, from a total of £1.1 million towards street lighting across the entire county. In earlier discussions, it had emphasised the savings that can be made from their plan to offer part-night lighting.

A spokesperson for the County Council previously told Varsity that “we’re even worse off than we thought we were going to be from the recent government announcements”, and emphasised that if cuts were not made in areas such as street lighting then cuts would be made to services such as those for children and the disabled.

With additional reporting from Daniel Gayne.