Commenting on the freeze, Cllr Roger Avenin (Con, Baileys Court), Chair of the Finance Committee, said:

“We continue to find ourselves in uncertain economic times and many residents’ household budgets are under pressure. As a Council we’re here to support the community and it simply wouldn’t be right to ask hard working families to pay any more this year.”

Councillors are also keen to point out that services aren’t under threat with Town Mayor Cllr Ben Walker commenting:

“We’re not making cuts, we’re still providing for the community; we’re just focusing very hard on doing everything we can as efficiently as possible. Our youth budget for example has been maintained but it has been opened up to a wider variety of organisations than ever before, so we can support a diverse range of activities for young people of all ages.”

The Town Council precept typically represents less than 10% of the total Council Tax bill. The largest proportion, around 80%, is taken by South Gloucestershire Council (SGC), with the police and fire services making up the remainder.

SGC is yet to set it tax requirement for the coming  financial year – a decision is expected to be made at its Full Council meeting on Wednesday 22nd February.

The Government is offering a sweetener grant equivalent to a 2.5% increase for Local Authorities that impose a Council Tax freeze but the BBC recently reported that a number of Councils have already announced increases of up to 3.5%.

Footnote: Cllr Walker’s claim that the Town Council’s “youth budget … has been maintained” is at odds with an analysis presented in a recent Journal article. Cllr Walker has been invited to justify his statement.

Photo: Bradley Stoke Town Council in action (May 2011)

A record crowd of nearly 8,000 surrounded the Jubilee Centre, Bradley Stoke, last night for the Bradley Stoke Town Council Firework Display.

Now in its ninth year, the annual display has grown to be one of the largest in the Bristol area and the public were delighted with a 20 minute display described by many as “better than ever”.

No entrance fee is charged for the event but public generosity saw £4,894 raised for the Mayor’s charities through bucket collection’s carried out by volunteers from Little Stoke Social Club, local Air Cadets as well as the two benefiting organisations – the Three Brooks Nature Conservation Group and the Bradley Stoke Scouts.

Also in attendance, representing HM The Queen, was Vice Lord-Lieutenant for Gloucestershire Robert Bernays who congratulated the Town Council for putting on the event before leading the assembled masses in a countdown to the launch [audio clip].

Speaking after the event Town Mayor, Cllr Ben Walker thanked the Vice Lord-Lieutenant for attending and paid tribute to the work of council staff and volunteers for putting on the event, saying:

“I’m very grateful to Robert Bernays for finding time to attend our display, a lot of hard work goes in to planning and marshalling the event and it means a lot to those involved behind the scenes that it is recognised externally as one of the county’s big events.”

Adding:

“I should like to thank all the staff and volunteers that helped make the event a success as well as, of course, the good people of Bradley Stoke who gave so generously to my chosen charities.”

More photos on PicasaWeb: album; slideshow (The Journal)

Bradley Stoke’s 2011 firework display, organised by the Town Council, is to be attended by a representative of the Queen.

The countdown for the display, which will take place at the Jubilee Centre on Sunday 6th November 2011, will be carried out by the Vice Lord-Lieutenant of Gloucestershire, Robert Bernays.

The news, proudly announced by Mayor Ben Walker on the cover of the recent Town Council newsletter, follows a decision to keep the display at the Jubilee Centre despite the Senior Health and Safety Officer for last year’s event recommending that it be moved to another site because of crowd safety concerns.

Cllr Mark Forsyth said last year that the event had “become too successful for its own good”, adding: “we could have ended up with a ‘situation’”.

The Town Council, however, has since decided that it OK for the show to go on at the same venue. This year, the fireworks will be launched from the upper football pitch, leaving the lower football pitch available for spectators.

Mr Bernays doesn’t exactly have celebrity status, so his appearance is thought unlikely to exacerbate the perceived crowd safety issues at the popular event. Information about him is hard to come by, but a recent article in the Bristol Evening Post on his appointment to the royal position reveals that he ran Old Down Country Park for 25 years and was awarded an OBE for services to the community in 2010.

Anyone unable to attend the Sunday event in Bradley Stoke has the option of attending other local fireworks displays at Downend on Friday 4th November 2011 and Winterbourne on Saturday 5th November 2011.

Further details of all local events can be found on our 2011 Fireworks Display page.

All but one of the staff on the payroll of Bradley Stoke Town Council (BSTC) have been rewarded with £50 Mall vouchers “in recognition of good work to date and assistance in raising the profile of BSTC”, according to the draft minutes of last week’s Full Council meeting.

The news is revealed in the minuted account of a discussion item titled ‘Chairs recommendation on Annual Staff Appraisals’, from which the press and public were excluded. In the minutes, we learn that Mayor Ben Walker recommended:

“On completion of the new staff appraisals for 2010/11, the Chairs of the council committees would like to pay special thanks to the BSTC members of staff for their conduct, support and flexibility throughout 2010/11 and the implementation of the staffing restructure. Those staff members are: Rachel Pullen, John Rendell, Pat Louca, Vicky Davies, Sue Clark, Vanessa Walters, William Walton, Stephen Barton, Elaine Bezer, Patricia Harris, Royston Broderick and Dave Dace.”

The “staffing restructure” at the Town Council would appear to have been going on for some now, having first came to light in April 2010 when the Council held an ‘Extraordinary and Confidential’ meeting. Later, in June 2010, the profile of the then Deputy Town Clerk Lesley Osborne mysteriously disappeared from the staff list shown on the Council’s website. A press statement later explained that the officer had retired and that “no decision on the post would be taken until the results of the on-going staffing review are presented to Council.”

The Council’s 2011 Annual Report, published in April, explains that the role of Deputy Town Clerk role is not a full-time position and has now been taken on by the Council’s Premises Manager, John Rendell.

Further details of the restructuring are unknown because they have been consistently categorised as “confidential” in Council minutes.

The minutes of last week’s meeting continue:

“Council considers our staff team to be of the highest standards in comparison to other local councils and BSTC success is down to that team supporting, preparing and undertaking council’s wishes and being the face of the council on a day-to-day basis.”

“It has been council’s decision to award each named member of staff £50.00 worth of ‘Mall Cribbs Causeway’ vouchers in recognition of good work to date and assistance in raising the profile of BSTC.”

On going to a vote, the recommendation was carried, with nine Councillors in favour, one against and one abstaining.

The first draft of the Town Council’s 2011/2012 budget (the only one made available to the public) showed staff salaries amounting to £296,300, annotated as being a drop of 2.99% on the previous year “following restructure”. A further £45,000 was budgeted to be spent on contractor staff.

[Ed: Worrying to see from the minutes that the Chairs had made "Council's decision" to award vouchers before the item was even put to a vote of the Full Council!]

Local Councils have once again decided to ignore every single complaint received from residents in connection with the part-night street lighting recently introduced in Bradley Stoke.

Last night’s meeting of the Town Council heard that 35 comments and complaints, relating to 25 individual streets, have been received by the Council since the scheme was introduced in April this year. Topping the list is Pursey Drive (4 complaints), followed closely by The Worthys (3).

According to the Council, the comments and complaints received fall into the following categories:

• Lack of consultation
• Increased crime and anti-social behaviour
• Health and safety
• Confusion over switching times

A  meeting attended by officers from the Town Council and South Gloucestershire Council on 17th August is said to have considered all 35 complaints and agreed that “appropriate responses had [already] been made”, concluding that “there [is] no statistical evidence to support the complaints at this time.”

A formal review of crime and traffic accident statistics is promised for January next year.

Prior to its introduction, a public consultation on the proposed scheme was carried out by the Town Council from October to December 2010. A total of 153 responses were received, with 83 agreeing to the scheme as proposed (without alteration); 26 respondents were against the scheme, while a further 36 indicated support in general subject to specific amendments being made.

Mayor Ben Walker says he personally considered all the comments made by members of the public during the initial consultation but in the end chose to recommend that the scheme be implemented as originally proposed, and this was ratified by Council in January 2011.

The Council came under fire over the street light switch-off at July’s meeting of the Bradley Stoke Safer and Stronger Community Group, where many residents demanded that the lights be turned back on in their streets.

The same meeting heard a newly-elected Town Councillor, Ed Rose, make the astonishing claim that switching off street lights violated residents’ human rights. The newbie Councillor embarrassed the Mayor, who was sitting next to him, by demanding that the lights be switched back on because residents have a right to “liberty and security” and “protection from discrimination”.

Cllr Rose has now been absent without apology at all three Council meetings that he should have attended since his outburst in July.

More info: Minutes from the Part-Night Street Lighting meeting on 17th August 2011 and Frequently Asked Questions about the scheme [PDF, 2.4MB]

A Bradley Stoke Town Councillor has criticised the town’s newly-introduced part-night street lighting scheme by claiming it violates residents’ human rights.

Speaking at last week’s Safer and Stronger Communities meeting, Cllr Ed Rose said he supported calls by some residents for the lights to be turned back on because they have a right to “liberty and security” (Article 5 of the UK Human Rights Act) and “protection from discrimination” (Article 14).

The comments put Cllr Rose at odds with other members of the Town Council, including Mayor Ben Walker, who unanimously consented to the introduction of the scheme in January.

Cllr Rose, who was not a member of the Town Council at the time of the decision, says he was alerted to residents’ concerns at a Councillor surgery earlier this month.

A number of residents from Snowberry Close are understood to have attended the surgery and demanded that the lights be turned back on, saying that parts of their street are particularly dark due to the presence of tall trees which block out any ambient light.

Cllr Rose said he took the complaints on board and later conducted his own survey of opinions in Hawkins Crescent, Crystal Way and Snowberry Close, concluding that “people are worried and fear for their liberty and safety”.

One resident of Snowberry Close who attended the meeting recounted almost hitting a pedestrian crossing the road when driving home in the early hours when the street lights were out, adding: “I pay my rates, I should have my utilities”. The same resident complained of being “unable to see a thing” when looking out from his house after hearing a suspicious noise in the middle of the night.

Town Clerk Sharon Petela seemed to reverse a previously-stated policy by saying the Town Council was “collating concerns received”, adding that “emails aren’t being ignored”.

Regular readers will recall that in May residents were told to contact South Gloucestershire Council’s (SGC’s) Streetcare department with their concerns and only contact the Town Council with questions about the public consultation that it had conducted on the scheme at the end of last year.

The Clerk confirmed that a couple of emails had been received from residents of Snowberry Close and added that “a couple of streets [elsewhere] have already been switched back on, as an emergency case”. However, subsequent enquiries by The Journal have revealed that just one street light, in Palmers Leaze, has been reverted to all-night operation.

Ms Petela informed the meeting that a meeting between the Town Council and SGC was planned for mid-August, when “streets will be reviewed”.

Following the meeting, The Journal offered Cllr Rose an opportunity to expand upon his references to human rights legislation but he would only say:

“We the Council of BSTC are here to look after our residents and do what we can to make life for all better.”

“The aspect of street lighting was discussed and [the] onus is upon Gloucestershire County Council (sic) to make a reply back to our inquiry.”

Asked how residents should register any concerns prior to the mid-August review meeting, Ms Petela told The Journal:

“Residents can use the BSTC website online contact form, or e-mail directly to myself, or use SGC’s Streetcare online contact forms“

Councillors could be in for a hard time at tonight’s meeting of the Bradley Stoke Safer and Stronger Community Group, where a number of residents are expected to protest against the recently completed part-night switch-off of street lights in Bradley Stoke.

The programme to adjust the lights so that they switch off between (nominally) midnight and 5am began in April but has only just been completed after work was halted on two occasions.

Work stopped for a week in April after a surge in complaints to South Gloucestershire Council (SGC) about malfunctioning street lights. The programme was then halted for a second time at the beginning of May, when “too much sun” was blamed for confusing new photocells fitted in the lamps, causing them to switch on and off at irregular times.

SGC later blamed a “software anomaly” in the new photocells and 2,000 lights had be be revisited by maintenance teams so that the faulty units could be replaced (at the expense of the supplier).

The aim of the scheme is to cut electricty bills and reduce CO2 emissions but a number of residents who have contacted The Journal have questioned whether the inconvenience and feeling of insecurity caused by the switch-off can be justified by the savings being made.

All the residents who have contacted us say they were unaware of the public consultation run by Bradley Stoke Town Council (BSTC) in the final months of 2010, despite the fact that every household in the town should have received a copy of the Council’s newsletter, which included a two page spread about the proposed scheme.

The Council also advertised the consultation prominently on its own website and held a public drop-in session in December 2010, where large scale versions of the plans were displayed.

One resident, Maria Sequeiros, has been using the social networking site Twitter (@mariathengineer) to voice her disquiet. A posting on 2nd July describes the switch-off scheme as “insane”, saying it will “lead to [a] rise in crime and insurance premiums”. Maria also tells readers that she voiced her concerns at a recent Councillor Surgery and that the Council has told her that it has “no legal duty to provide lighting”.

Other residents contacting The Journal have criticised the Council for introducing the scheme on the outcome of a public consultation that generated just 153 responses from a population of over 20,000.

Tonight’s Safer and Stronger meeting [agenda] takes place at the Jubilee Centre, Savages Wood Road, starting at 7pm. As well as giving residents a chance to “have their say” about local issues, the meeting will include presentations from Avon Fire & Rescue and Bradley Stoke Community Radio.

Residents will have a further opportunity to question Councillors tomorrow evening (Wednesday 13th) at a BSTC Full Council meeting [agenda], also at the Jubilee Centre (7:30pm start).

Related link: What’s On in Bradley Stoke (The Journal)

A software “anomaly” is the latest snag to hit the roll-out of part-night street lighting in Bradley Stoke.

South Gloucestershire Council says it will now have to revisit 2,000 street light columns that were recently fitted with special part-night photocells because a software anomaly in the units can lead to “erratic and varied” operation of the lights.

Between 28th April and 2nd May, residents in Bradley Stoke reported lights turning off at odd times or failing to turn on at all for several days.

The issue was initially put down to “unseasonal weather confusing the time clocks” but now a leaked memo from SGC says the supplier of the photocells has confirmed that faulty software is the root cause.

The Council says the supplier will exchange all 2,000 units already installed and pay for the cost of replacing them in the lighting columns.

The remedial work will commence on Monday 6th June and the Council warns that lights may stay on all night for two to three nights whilst the new units calibrate themselves.

The introduction of part-night street lighting, in which the lights go off for five hours between midnight and 6am (depending on the time of year), began in early April but was suspended a couple of weeks later after a surge in complaints from residents who said they were unaware of the scheme.

The programme resumed a week later, only to be halted for a second time at the beginning of May when the upgraded lights began behaving erratically.

The roll-out of part-night street lighting in Bradley Stoke is now expected to be completed by the beginning of July.

The roll-out of part-night street lighting in Bradley Stoke is once again on hold after newly-fitted photocells in the lamps started to malfunction.

An upgrade programme to adjust the lights so that they would turn off for five hours a night between midnight and 6am, with the aim of saving money and cutting carbon emissions, began in early April.

Work was halted for a week in mid-April after a surge of complaints from confused residents, many of whom said they hadn’t been aware of the public consultation on the big switch-off that had taken place months earlier.

Then, at the end of April, a number of Journal readers left comments on an earlier article to report lights turning off at odd times or, in one case, failing to turn on at all for several days.

The matter was raised by a resident at the Town Council’s Annual Meeting on Wednesday 11th May, where Town Clerk Sharon Petela blamed the problems on unseasonal weather, saying:

“It’s all down to the amount of sunlight we’ve had. The time clocks can’t work out what time of the year it is because we’ve had too much sun.”

South Gloucestershire Council (SGC) has now issued a statement attributing the problems to the new photocells:

Between 28th April and the 2nd May 2011 some of the part-night photocells began to malfunction. This malfunction was not restricted to South Gloucestershire and also occurred in other areas in the South West.”

“We have been monitoring the operation of the lights carefully in the days following the issue coming to our attention. We can confirm the malfunction has corrected itself and the equipment is now operating normally.”

“We are liaising with our suppliers to establish why this fault occurred, however at present the results are inconclusive and subject to further investigation. We are therefore delaying the roll-out of the next phase of the part night initiative until we can determine the cause of the malfunction and put measures in place to prevent a re-occurrence.”

“To clarify, the scheme in Bradley Stoke is currently on hold while further assessment is carried out but we would hope to resume by the end of the month. No other areas are affected. In the meantime we will continue to monitor the situation.”

General enquiries about the part-night street light scheme should be directed to the SGC StreetCare Helpdesk on 01454 868000.

Questions relating to the local public consultation on the scheme are being dealt with by Bradley Stoke Town Council.

Bradley Stoke Mayor Ben Walker has raised £10,005 for his chosen charity, St Peter’s Hospice, during his year in office which came to an end last night at the Annual General Meeting of the Town Council.

A cheque for the record amount, raised throughout the year at a number of events, including the Community Festival and Fireworks Display, was presented to Wenda Hillier, one of the charity’s Community Fundraisers.

Cllr Walker said:

“It has been an honour to serve as Mayor this last twelve months and it is an even greater honour to present such a large cheque to this very worthy cause. I’m very grateful to everyone who has donated and supported our events throughout the last year.

Wenda Hillier of St Peter’s Hospice replied:

“We’d like to thank Ben for choosing St Peter’s Hospice as his charity of the year, as well as the people of Bradley Stoke for taking on his challenge to raise vital funds for us.”

“The cost of providing our unique and specialised service free of charge to the people of Bristol is over £6 million per year, so every penny raised by the people of Bradley Stoke will make a huge difference to people with terminal illness.”

The formal business of the meeting saw eight new Town Councillors sworn in following their election on Thursday 5th May. For the first time in the town’s history, all 15 members of the Council are Conservatives.

Notable new members include Tom Aditya (Manor Farm ward), said to be the first person of Asian origin elected to the Town Council, and 23-year-old student Charlotte Walker (Lakeside ward), reckoned to be the town’s youngest-ever Councillor.

Cllr Ben Walker was re-elected for a second term as Mayor, breaking the recent practice of changing the post holder annually. A press release put out by the Town Council explained that “no clear successor was apparent” after last year’s Deputy Mayor Morgan Baynham had “retired from Council”.

Newly-elected Cllr Charlotte Walker, now officially revealed as the Mayor’s younger sister, was a surprising choice as Vice Chair (Deputy Mayor).

Press Spokesperson Cllr Robert Jones insisted that the Deputy Mayor had been chosen on merit, adding: “she’s got a great future ahead of her”.

The public question session heard local resident John Miller say it was a “good thing” that eleven of the fifteen Council members are residents of the town. Prior to the May election, a majority (eight) of the Councillors had come from beyond the town’s boundaries.

Photo shows new Councillors (L-R): Charlotte Walker, Tony Griffiths, Keir Gravil, Elaine Hardwick, Ed Rose and Kim Harris.

Cllrs Julian Barge (Mayor 2003/04, 2005/06 & 2007/08), Ronnie Conway-Haskins (2006/07), Mark Forsyth (2009/10) and Sandra Hobson (2005/06) have all chosen not to contest the upcoming Town Council election that sees a total of 29 candidates fighting the 15 available seats.

Cllr Barge, a Town Councillor since 1999, currently represents the Conservative party, having defected from the Liberal Democrats in 2006 when he accused his former party of “negative and sometimes nasty campaigning”. He was Mayor at the time of the Council’s very public bust-up with the Northavon Bowls Club in 2008, which ended with the club being disbanded and landed the Council with an ongoing £7,200 p.a. bill for the upkeep of the Baileys Court bowling green, previously paid by the bowlers.

Cllr Conway-Haskins has been a Town Councillor since 2003, initially as a Liberal Democrat – until a row in a row over a wrongly attributed quote led to her resigning from the party and becoming independent. She says she is giving up because she feels she has already given enough to the community (having previously been a Councillor in Newton Abbot) and because of deteriorating health.

Cllr Forsyth (Conservative) has been a Town Councillor since 2007. He has chaired the Council’s Finance Committee for a number of years and may be best known to residents for his multi-lingual “meine Damen und Herren” addresses over the PA at the annual fireworks display.

Cllr Hobson (Liberal Democrat), an actress with a scandalous past, was elected to the Town Council in 2003. Her attendance record in recent years has been particularly poor, with the Council’s latest Annual Report showing she was present at just two of the 20 meetings she was expected at within the last twelve months. Nonetheless, she apparently wishes to continue in politics as she is standing as a candidate for a South Gloucestershire Council seat in Downend.

Other Town Councillors choosing not to defend their seats on 5th May are: Morgan Baynham (Conservative, elected 2007), Ernie Brown (Conservative, elected 2009; standing this time for Stoke Gifford Parish Council) and Dr Elizabeth Todd (Conservative, first elected 1999).

Related links:

• 2011 Local Elections in Bradley Stoke (The Journal)
• Bradley Stoke People (The Journal)

The implementation of a scheme to switch-off most of Bradley Stoke’s street lights for five hours a night has resumed following a one week suspension after South Gloucestershire Council experienced a surge in complaints

The big switch-off started in early April after members of Bradley Stoke Town Council voted for the scheme to be implemented following a public consultation in which 54% of respondents expressed unqualified support.

A Journal reader reported on 10th April that the lights in Stean Bridge Road had started switching off at around 1:10am and it is believed that around one-third of the town, working up from the south, has now been converted.

However, last night’s meeting of  the Town Council’s Finance Committee was told that numerous residents had phoned SGC’s Streetcare department to complain about the new lighting regime, only to be told: “it’s nothing to do with us, you need to contact your Town Council”.

In fact, the switch-off scheme is an SGC initiative and the Town Council’s only involvement was to organise a public consultation on the proposals.

Although 36 of the 153 consultation respondents made constructive suggestions for changes to the original plans, these were all ignored, without analysis or comment, by the Town Council.

The only change made by SGC after the consultation ended has been the addition of two extra streets, where traffic calming measures had been overlooked, to the exclusion list.

Staff on the Streetcare hotline have now been told to explain to callers that the scheme is an SGC initiative aimed at reducing carbon emissions and cutting electricty bills.

The majority of street lights in Bradley Stoke are set to be turned off for five hours a night, after a public consultation found that 54% of respondents agreed with an energy-saving  scheme put forward by South Gloucestershire Council (SGC).

A further 23% of respondents said they supported the scheme in general but submitted suggestions for amendments.

The big switch-off is likely to start in April after members of Bradley Stoke Town Council voted for the scheme to be implemented without alteration despite 36 of the 153 respondents making constructive suggestions for changes.

Mayor Ben Walker told The Journal that he had personally considered all the comments made by members of the public but in the end chose to recommend that the scheme be implemented as originally proposed.

All 80 comments submitted by members of the public can now be viewed on the Town Council website [here, MS Word]. A fair number fall into the Nimbyist “it’s a good idea but not in my street” category and many express concerns about an increase in crime.

Strangely, the Town Council didn’t specify the savings expected to made by the scheme in Bradley Stoke but a similar scheme in Thornbury is reported to be expected to save £12,000 per annum with a return on investment after 18 months.

The proposal document acknowledged that “fine tuning” of the scheme might be required and stated that “requests for the reinstatement of individual streetlights to all night operation will be considered by the Town Council on their merits”.

However, the Town Council now appears to want to avoid getting involved with the “fine tuning”, with Town Clerk Sharon Petela telling The Journal that this will be handled directly by SGC once the scheme is up and running.

The Journal comments

The Town Council is to be applauded for staging the public consultation but those who took the time to submit comments will be right to feel aggrieved that their input has been ignored.

It seems that our Town Councillors simply don’t want to get involved in the finer details of the scheme – hardly a good example of “localism” in practice. This is perhaps no surprise after some Councillors originally demanded a payback guarantee from SGC before they would support a public consultation on the switch-off scheme.

One suspects that some Councillors will be hoping that the big switch-off is delayed until after the May elections, in order to avoid a possible backlash by disaffected Nimby voters.

No you haven’t slept through winter and woken up on 1st April, that really is a question to be considered by Town Councillors at a meeting of the Leisure, Youth and Amenities (LYA) Committee this evening (Monday 13th December).

Following the launch, earlier this month, of a government competition to choose a town in the UK which will be bestowed the honour in 2012 for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, Councillors will be asked to consider whether Bradley Stoke should submit a bid.

The Journal understands that the item has been included on the agenda following an inquiry by a member of the public and, if supported, will see Bradley Stoke go head to head with the likes of Reading and Cheltenham in the contest for the honour.

Committee Chairman Cllr Robert Jones says he’s looking forward to the debate, telling The Journal:

“It’s an unusual topic and it will be interesting to see what my colleagues have to say on the matter. The fact that the public are coming forward to suggest we go for it shows how proud people are of the town and that in itself is something we should recognise.”

Published guidelines for the contest suggest the winning bid “should have supplied convincing evidence of their ability to welcome people into their areas and to provide, promote or facilitate access to a wide variety of places, activities and events.”

Cllr Jones however refused to be drawn on the chances of success, merely saying:

“We haven’t even agreed to make a bid yet! I wouldn’t want to pre-empt that discussion by commenting on our chances.”

More info: Agenda for tonight’s LYA Committee meeting [MS Word]

Bradley Stoke Town Council’s public drop-in session to discuss proposals for part-night street lighting takes place tomorrow (Saturday 4th December) from 10am to 2pm at the Jubilee Centre, Savages Wood Road.

South Gloucestershire Council’s (SGC’s) suggestion that Bradley Stoke might like to introduce an overnight switch-off of selected streetlights was met with a frosty reception earlier this year when some Councillors said they would only support the scheme if the money saved was used to benefit Bradley Stoke alone and not the whole of South Gloucestershire.

Despite these concerns, the Town Council launched a public consultation on the proposals in October and maps showing the streets where lights could go off have been available on the Council website for the last two months.

Saturday’s drop-in session at the Jubilee Centre will have the maps on display and residents will be able to discuss the proposals with councillors and officials.

A consultation feedback form was included in the October edition of the Town Council newsletter and replies may also be submitted online via the Council’s website. Responses must be made by Friday 10th December and the Council says it hopes to publish the results by the second week of January.

Implementation of the scheme by South Gloucestershire’s lighting department could then start as early as April 2011.

The initial list of streets to be included in the scheme has been drawn up based on a set of criteria that include road safety and crime history factors [full list here].

Looking at the maps, the principal exceptions are roads with traffic calming measures: Brook Way, Bowsland Way, Wheatfield Drive, Dewfalls Drive, Fiddlers Wood Lane, Champs Sur Marne, Baileys Court Road, Webbs Wood Road and Juniper Way.

Further street-level consultation meetings are likely to be held in cases where residents ask for the lights to be kept on despite all the criteria for a switch-off being satisfied.

Lights that are converted to part-night operation will switch off for a five hour period that is nominally defined as midnight to 5am but can vary slightly according to the time of year.

The benefits of the scheme are said to be two-fold:

• reduced carbon emissions; and
• reduced energy costs

SGC estimates that for each individual street light conversion there will be a 40% reduction in both carbon emissions and energy costs.

Part-night street lighting maps issued by SGC:

• Map 1 (North) [PDF, 5.6MB]
• Map 2 (Central) [PDF, 5.6MB]
• Map 3 (South) [PDF, 5.8MB]

The Bradley Stoke Fireworks Display, held annually at the Jubilee Centre, may have to move to another site if health and safety concerns arising from the large attendance cannot be resolved, the Town Council heard last week.

Crowds at the event reached five to six thousand in 2009, when numbers were swelled due to the cancellation of the popular Clifton Downs display and similar numbers were seen at this year’s renewal.

Cllr Mark Forsyth, Senior Health and Safety Officer for this year’s event, warned that the event had “become too successful for its own good”, adding: “We could have ended up with a ‘situation’”.

Councillors heard that the need to keep crowds off the public roads surrounding the venue led to a potential over-crowding issues within the car park of the Jubilee Centre.

Although the artificial pitch at the site had been made available to spectators, there were insufficient marshals to guide people in there, claimed one Councillor.

Summing up, Cllr Forsyth said:

“With my health and safety hat on, I wouldn’t do it again. That’s my professional advice.”

Options discussed for resolving the issue included rearranging the site layout, so that access to the venue could be properly controlled, or moving the event to another site.

Suggested alternative venues included the grounds of Bradley Stoke Community School and the Trench Lane car boot sale site.

It was eventually agreed that a meeting be set up in the New Year between the firework company, the event management company and Council officers.

This year’s firework display raised approximately £3,800 for the Mayor’s charity, St Peter’s Hospice.