Issue - meetings

(1)       Kent Highway Services (KHS) provided and maintained street lights, lit signs and lit bollards for the benefit of highway users and to aid crime prevention.  However, there was no statutory requirement on highway authorities to provide public lighting. All do and therefore require a policy and strategy document to lay out the way in which lighting was provided and maintained.

(2)       Street lighting had made great steps forward in the recent past as shown by the very positive responses given as feedback by county and district members and parish councillors in the tracker survey of December 2009. The performance had remained at a consistently high level for defects wholly in the control of KHS. To maintain the progress that had been made and to set out the service direction for the future, a new policy and strategy had been produced by the Street Lighting team.        

(3)       The policy and strategy had been designed to address the three main principles of the street lighting service -

            Energy and Carbon Emissions

            Maintenance

            Efficiency and Cost Reductions

(4)               The proposed Policy document and the Strategy were attached as  Appendices to the report.  The hierarchy of the documents was very clear with the Strategy delivering the deal behind the Policy.  Once the documents were approved, an Asset Management Plan would be created which would set out the levels of service to be delivered and the intervention criteria for maintenance that would apply.

(5)       RESOLVED that the adoption of the Policy and Strategy for Street Lighting be supported and recommended to the Cabinet Member for adoption.