Need advice on complaining to Council over light: what are my rights?

Smash light

Well it is a solution ! lol only joking or am I, shut up red angel ! lol

Thanks, this is really helpful. I will pursue these links.

Is there a local NAS group or a parents group or some other qualified individual who could look into this on your behalf and provide advocacy? A local NAS group might already know the right officials to talk to. Or if your local councillor is the sort who would be sympathetic, they might be able to help.

For things like this it is incredibly difficult for an individual acting on their own account. Councils are mostly staffed by career civil servants. Gone are the days when they were local and had family ties with an area. They'll do four or five or maybe as much as ten years with your local authority and move on. And consequently there's no mileage for them being helpful to individuals especially if they might lose brownie points towards their next promotion to a better job in a bigger council.

Getting things done is thus extraordinarily hard, as the whole system conspires to avoid detail - its all broad sweep decision making. As I mentioned above anything sub-contracted is even more complex. You'll just see walls springing up (metaphor similar to "closing ranks" - in other words they'll put up barriers). Elected councillors who try to fight through issues often find the civil servants will neutralise them by putting every obstacle in their way.

Its like "Yes Primeminister" the comedy series, but a hundred times worse. You cannot sack the senior ones, however incompetent, because they have huge severance payments on their contract (often half to one million pounds) that can bankrupt a council.

Also talk to CPRE (Council for Preservation of Rural England). Your local library can identify the local rep. They are concerned about the environmental impact of excessive artificial light at night. But more importantly they are experienced lobbyists (though some can be a bit vexatious and loose credibility themselves). But the area CPRE rep will have contacts and connections.

Also is there a Neighbourhood Group (Neighbourhood Watch or Neighbourhood Action). They are often very well connected. There's bound to be one in your area. They will know sympathetic councillors.

Good luck

But you could use a torch or have a night light. There are ways round needing light, whereas for those who can't sleep in the light, there are not many comfortable options. Even a face mask is not really comfortable, but I wear it for complete darkness.

I am not saying that there should not be any lights, just that they should not glow so brightly, so as not to intrude into my room, and should be off by midnight.

I agree with the whole premise of what you are complaining about.  I just think due to my own experiences fighting authority, no matter how right you are, it's very hard to win.  They would likely take the view that unless they are inundated with complaints by many they will ignore you (as you are already finding).  They will see you as a vexatious and unreasonable complainant and start refusing to take calls and emails will either get "lost" in the system, they will pass the buck (as they have done already) or you will get politician-style responses.  Good luck with it anyway.

IntenseWorld: while eye shades are a good solution in the short term, they are not the most comfortable thing to wear. It is far more comfortable to lie in bed in a darkened room with nothing pressing against one's face. This is why I am continuing the fight. Also, there is the wider issue of losing a natural resource: the dark sky at night, which all our ancestors enjoyed, but which today's generations are denied. I am campaigning because it is a moral and ethical issue, and it will be having an impact on many people. Now I am more in control of the situation I can campaign without feeling so stressed.

Just out of curiosity, as you have found eye shades that work, why do you want to put yourself through further stress of complaining when you have a solution?

Thanks for your response .

First in reply to Longman: I am afraid I can't move into a spare bedroom or space because I live in a one bedroom flat. The only other option would be to sleep in the sitting room - not possible because it is even brighter here! - or the walk in cupboard, but this does not have windows, so is airless.

I live in a low crime area, so I am not so sure that crime would be as big an issue as many suggest, if the lights were turned off. I think we live in a security state, which encourages paranoia and a lack of trust, and I think it would be better to address the causes of crime.

Trying to complain has been horrendously difficult. I keep getting passed round and round, with the Council saying that SSE are reponsible for the lights, and SSE saying that the council is responsible for when the lights are turned off, so I need to go back to them!.  When I told the Council that SSE had turned the lights off at midnight for me, but they ended up being on until 1am, they simply said that SSE should not have done this without consulting the Council!. No concern for my plight at all.I am following through with the formal complaints process, and if need be will take it to the parliamentary ombudsman.

crystal12: I bought some eye shades yesterday, from Clare's Accessories (everywhere else had sold out) as an emergency measure. They worked wonders. It took a while to get used to wearing them, but the pure darkness triggered sleep almost right away, and I slept intensely, with vivid dreams!. I have not slept this well for a long time!

I will carry on my fight back today, more refreshed, by visiting the Council offices and getting the complaint in motion.

Hi Hope - this might sound a silly suggestion but have you thought of an eye shade like they wear on aeroplanes?

A parallel could be drawn with strip lighting, where the starter causes a frequency of flicker and also noise which affects many people on the spectrum. In some public facilities, as an acknowledgement to this problem, some areas are lit by lighting that doesn't cause this irritation, where people affected can work.

However because the kind of strip lighting is fairly universal, the policy seems to be that people affected by them through disability have to put up with this, but may have the option of alternative environments.

I'm not being unsympathetic; I'm prone to distress from complex noise and movement, which unfortunately covers a lot of NT preferred environments.

But the council is more likely to respond that it is for you to take evasive action (for which you may be able to get help, or they assume you can). But is there a room you could sleep in that doesn't look onto the illuminated street, or are you stuck with that configuration?

Subcontracted services are a real menace these days because it takes matters outside the democratic process. Also the daftest things go on. To save money pedestrian crossing lights have cheaper bulbs than those for traffic - so they fail more often, hence pedestrian lights with no red man symbol are common(what's the point of teaching kids the green cross code?).

In some local authorities (like the one I've just moved from) they've introduced an economy measure of turning off half the streetlights, which means lots of dark areas and more crime, but lights are still ridiculously wasted on public spaces like car parks, unused overnight.

What you've got is a costly improvement (probably one that wasn't thought through properly - there may have been more expensive options with better shields). Having made the cost committment they have to live with it or face budget cuts elsewhere (not that civic junketting, bonuses and severance deals get cut back anything like as sharply as support for the disabled and elderly). If it is subcontracted so much the harder as reversal entails breach of contract issues and compensations. The costs are probably astronomical.

So I suspect the only resolution you can get is either relocation or some modification of your windows. It would be an individual redress rather than any change to the street lighting. People have to travel at night (shift workers for example) whether on foot or by car and need to see where they are going, and crime is higher on unlit or poorly lit streets. So there will be fierce opposition to turning them off at night.