Lincolnshire County Council said women’s safety is “about much more than street lights” and lighting has “no impact on night-time crime levels”.
This comes as a petition with nearly 4,000 signatures so far is demanding to keep the street lights on in Lincoln all night following the Sarah Everard case and the government’s latest extra funding announcement.
The government wants to double the size of the Safer Streets fund to £45 million in order to provide neighbourhood measures such as better lighting and CCTV.
Karen Cassar, assistant director for highways at Lincolnshire County Council, said: “I can completely understand why some residents, especially women, might feel concerned for their own safety after Sarah Everard’s tragic disappearance in London.
“I know many women – from Lincolnshire and around the country – who don’t feel safe alone after dark, even where there are streetlights, and also long before midnight which is when some in Lincolnshire are turned off.
“Unfortunately, the issue of women’s safety is about much more than streetlights.”
She added: “In 2018, two years after we made the switch to part-night lighting for some of our lights, the police confirmed they’d found no impact on night-time crime levels as a result of the change.
“They said then, and have said since, that if they ever did have any concerns, they’d let us know and of course we’d work with them to see how street lighting could help.
“We also have a system in place for parish, town or district councils to apply to convert any streetlights back to all night lighting for a one-off payment, if they think it’s appropriate. To date, only four lights have been converted this way.”
A memorial for Sarah Everard has appeared in Lincoln on university campus. | Photo: The Lincolnite
Marc Jones, Police and Crime Commissioner for Lincolnshire, said: “I would absolutely support a bid to government for additional funding for street lighting, if the community felt that’s what they wanted to be done.”
However, Mr Jones said that the Safer Streets first round funding was “exceedingly restrictive”.
“It’s around areas of high levels of deprivation with a huge amount of criteria, which basically meant we only had two locations in the entire county for which we could submit bids for anything.
“The second round, which the deadline is the March 25, is the one where we can do joint bids with local government. The first one we couldn’t.
“Again, the criteria is exceedingly tight. They’ve changed it slightly, but it still hasn’t meant that we can basically suggest areas that we choose. We’ve got to meet very strict criteria that the government set out.”
PCC Labour candidate Rosanne Kirk has promoted the petition for keeping Lincoln’s street lights on all night on her Facebook campaign page.
In 2016, the council turned off more than half of its 68,000 street lights in a bid to save £1.7 million.
Last year, it was reported that “residents are not concerned about part-night lighting,” according to the county’s highways chief after just one parish council asked for lights to be switched back on in 12 months.
Despite enquiries from Gainsborough, Louth, Metheringham, West Pinchbeck, Skegness, Deeping St James and Billingborough, just four lights in Pinchbeck were requested.
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A 38-year-old man from a North Lincolnshire village charged with murder will face an eight-day trial later this year.
Emergency services were called at 4.23am on Saturday, July 2 to reports that a man was seriously injured on South Parade in central Doncaster.
The 28-year-old victim was taken to hospital but was sadly pronounced dead a short time later.
A post-mortem examination found that he died of injuries to his head, chest and abdomen.
Formal identification of the victim is yet to take place, South Yorkshire Police said earlier this week.
Steven Ling, 38, of Park Drain, Westwoodside in North Lincolnshire, has been charged with murder and was remanded in custody to appear at Doncaster Magistrates Court on Monday, July 4.
Ling later appeared at Sheffield Crown Court on Tuesday, July 5 for a plea and trial preparation hearing.
No pleas were entered during the hearing, but an eight-day trial was set for November 28, 2022. Ling has now been remanded into custody until the next hearing.
The Lincolnite went on a ride-along with a Lincolnshire Police officer from the force’s Roads Policing Unit (RPU), which aims to disrupt criminals’ use of the roads and reduce the number of serious and fatal accidents.
The team will support the county response including local policing, neighbourhood policing and criminal investigation too.
Operations first began in Grantham in January this year and started in Louth earlier this week with a sergeant and nine PCs based in both locations.
The Lincolnite went out on a ride-along with PC Rich Precious from Lincolnshire Police’s Roads Policing Unit. | Photo: Steve Smailes for The Lincolnite
PC Rich Precious has been a police officer for 22 years after joining the force in 2000 and he recently rejoined the Roads Policing Unit, working out of Louth.
PC Precious, who also previously worked as a family liaison officer for road deaths for 16 years, took The Lincolnite out in his police car to the A1 up to Colsteworth and then back to Grantham. He described that particular area as “one of the main arterial routes that goes through Lincolnshire”.
PC Rich Precious driving down the A1 up to Colsterworth. | Photo: Steve Smailes for The Lincolnite
Speaking about the new Roads Policing Unit, he said: “It’s intelligence led policing, it’s targeted policing in areas that have been underrepresented in terms of police presence, on the roads certainly, over a number of years.
“We’re hoping that the development of this unit will help address that balance, and look towards using the ANPR system to prevent criminals’ use of the road, and to identify key areas or routes where there’s a high percentage of people killed or seriously injured on the road, what we commonly refer to as KSI.
PC Precious is helping to keep the roads safer in Lincolnshire. | Photo: Steve Smailes for The Lincolnite
When asked if he thinks the new team will help reduce the number of serious and fatal accidents in the county, he added: “That’s what the the unit designed for. Sadly, in Lincolnshire our road network does seem to incur a number of those KSI accidents year on year, and we need to reduce that.
“I’ve worked additionally in my roles as a family liaison officer on road death for 16 years, so I’ve seen first hand the impact that road death has on families and victims families.
“I know it’s important that we try and reduce those because, it’s very sad to see how a fatal road traffic collision can affect a family and the victims of that family.”
Marc Gee, Inspector for Lincolnshire Police’s Roads Policing Unit. | Photo: Steve Smailes for The Lincolnite
Marc Gee, Inspector for the Roads Policing Unit, told The Lincolnite: “Every day there will be officers on duty from both teams and they’ll cover the whole county or the county’s roads.
“Eventually, we’ll have nine police cars and we’ve got six motorbikes. We’ll be utilising them with as many officers as we can every day basically to make our roads safer and enforce against the criminals who feel like it’s okay to come into the county and use our road for criminal purposes.”
Lincolnshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner Marc Jones at the launch of the force’s Roads Policing Unit. | Photo: Steve Smailes for The Lincolnite
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