Jump to content

Recommended Posts

Over the last days, the streetlamps around mine have been replaced for LED lamps. Great in terms of reduced energy usage...however...


FAR TOO BRIGHT in my opinion, and the lovely yellow glow of the old ones replaced with harsher white-ish light.


Anyone else feel the same? It's just upped the light pollution considerably. I wonder if any chance they could be toned/turned down?

I saw them working on them the other day (Horniman end). I'll have a look out tonight after dark and see what I think. So far have only seen them alight at dusk. May be a big ask to get them changed for a warmer tone, but you could try!!
They are brighter, but compared to the orangey glow of the street lights I can see at the end of Underhill on Lordship Lane the new ones seem to offer better lighting (security) for people walking home in the dark. I agree the tone could be warmer, but not sure whether Southwark would make the effort to adjust them.
  • 1 month later...
I think the best course of action here would be to make a formal complaint to the council and force them to take action. They have plenty of lolly sloshing around in their coffers at present, so they can easily rip out the new lamps and replace them with something a bit more to your atmospheric pleasing.
Plus all the little birdies will surely appreciate the efforts, and will merrily tweet at a suitable time each morning, around about when the curtains are drawn and the fresh OJ is squeezed, but strictly no earlier lest valuable beauty sleep be interrupted.

I sometimes had complaints about upgraded lights shining in bedroom windows and would get the council to add a light shield to cast a shadow on said windows.

White light is better for people walking around ot see whites of eyes and whether someone looking at you. Apparently better for street safety.

I had been seeking for street lights to be remotely monitored and controlled - fab cost saving as avoids having council officers on 'night patrolling' looking for dead street lights. They can then also be remotely turned down. Sadly not implemented yet.

They're horrible. I feel like I'm living next to a football stadium. Like so many things the council does, they're all function and zero design. They've carpet bombed the neighbourhood with these awful things. Guess there wouldn't have been any point in consulting residents, we all know how the council stitches up consultations before they start. So angry.
In studies where councils have turned street lamps off or dimmed them considerably between the hours of midnight and 5 AM there has been no corresponding increase in crime. There is however evidence that these excessively bright lights can do damage to our sleep patterns and our wildlife. Apart from no longer being able to sleep in my own bedroom since the lamps were installed, walking up Underhill road at night is now like being under prison spotlights. They are causing light pollution and the only thing we can do and keep doing is bombard the council with complaints.
Here is a good article about how damaging the street lamps are to insects: https://luxreview.com/article/2018/06/light-pollution-linked-to-decline-in-insects. I just feel so sad. It feels like a madness - on the one hand we are informed we are facing a catastrophic threat to our global biodiversity and then our local authority implements policies to speed up the decline. We are told to remove our tablets and phones from our and our children?s rooms as the blue lights disrupt sleep but now that very same light is streamed though our windows. Yes you can buy blackout blinds but I want dark skies and a right to night.
New one outside our house.... I thought the police were doing a raid across the road. So pleased my bedroom is at the back. Terrible for birds and for anyone trying to sleep roadside. Is it worth complaining? Nothing has been done about a road hump despite being told that it would be ?looked at?, so any thoughts?
Yes complain. I was told today that their lead light engineer is due to carry out a night scout of the area on the 20th of Feb. He/she is obliged to look at every complaint and measure for obtrusive light on your property. The more people who make a fuss hopefully something will be done. Southwark are saying they are following guidelines and good practices as set out by the institution of lighting professionals (iLP). However, the ILP recommends providing an adequate shield, replacing the light fitting or varying the light levels if a complaint is received. They also suggest adopting a light ?curfew? which means turning the lights down after 23:00. Southwark is clearly not following these guidelines.

The streetlights in our street already had light shields fitted to shade bedroom windows. The shields were all removed when the lights were replaced with LEDs yesterday.


I don't mind the colour temperature, and the light spread seems a little more directed, but these new lights are almost painfully bright from certain angles, and way more powerful than is necessary or desirable after, say, midnight.


I'll definitely contact the council to request that they be dimmed later at night, for the benefit of people and wildlife.

Brightness can definitely be managed. You are almost certainly stuck with the colour though, as most 'white' LEDs are actually blue ones with phosphor in the plastic lens that absorbs some of the blue light and emits yellow instead. So the warmth/coldness of the LED is actually a balance between the blue and the yellow. This phosphor content(and hence blue/yellow ratio) is already baked in at manufacturing time so can't be altered.


It's also possible to make white LEDs from red, green and blue ones mixed together but this is more expensive and I have never seen street lights use this method.

we live on East Dulwich Grove - the new lights have turned up here (they used to be quite a soothing yellow) and this is no exaggeration - it is like having a dentist's lamp shining into our bedroom everynight - its penetrating our shutters - looks like we'll have to either invest a lot in blackout curtains or put something over the windows....never noticed it in 3 years until a week ago just after seeing these posts appear.

I complained about the same thing on Hindmans Road last year and had a lighting engineer from the council come and take some readings. They measured the light levels at a downstairs window and we were told this measured less than 1 LUX - apparently obtrusive light can be as much as 5 LUX (if that means anything to anyone)! With the shutters open upstairs or downstairs at the moment it looks light daylight with the street lamps on so I can't imagine it 5x greater!


I did suggest the light shields but my request seemed to be ignored and I gave up.

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Latest Discussions

    • Where did I say he did a good job? Yup and Corbyn was very close to Len McCluskey and funded by Unite wasn't he...they're all as bad as each other... Labour have to purge their party of the far-left - they're a disaster. Allan Johnson summed it up so well on election night in 2019....  
    • Thank you for the detailed advise @trinidad It is definitely damage we are concerned about. I don’t think Evri would agree to pay the bill to fix our gate or letter box if they were to be damaged as a result of their delivery drivers helper. Our doorbell can be heard from outside when rung so we don’t quite believe the aggressive simultaneous door/letter box banging is necessary. It can be quite a shock it is done very aggressively.  I’ll definitely action the steps you’ve kindly provided along with a phone call tomorrow. I do sympathise with the role drivers have and how busy they are, which is why we tried communicating directly with her but sadly we haven’t succeeded 
    • What outcome would you like? Disciplinary action? Not to have the driver back? Retraining? I know there is alot of pressure on drivers to deliver within a set day. if he slams the gate, is it evidence he is causing damage, or is the noise a irritant to yourself? You could put a sign up or buy a signing asking to close the gate gentle???? can you hear the door bell from the door? he might be ringing, not hearing and therefore knocking. In trhe notes section of the be livery page, there is a note section, although there is not 100 per cent these notes would be read as these drivers are constantly rushing.  I did a google search for you, i found this and you can try the envri website Contact Us | Evri   To complain to Evri, you can follow these steps: Contact Customer Service: Call Evri's customer service at 0330 808 5456 for assistance with your complaint.    1 Write a Letter: Address your complaint to Capitol House, 1 Capitol Close, Morley, Leeds, West Yorkshire, LS27 0WH.    1 Use the Official Website: Visit the Evri complaints page on their official website for detailed instructions on how to submit a complaint.    2 Email or Call for Specific Issues: For issues like missing or damaged parcels, you can email or call 0800 988 8888, which is free to call.    1 These methods will help you effectively communicate your concerns to Evri.   My driver is called anthony, he is brilliant to be honest. I cant fault him.
    • When I have more time and energy, I will look up the actual number of votes cast for each party in that election, rather than the number of seats won. I'm interested to see that you apparently  think that  Boris Johnson did a good job of "leading the country through Covid." Is your memory really that short? I won't stoop to calling Johnson and his cronies names in the way that you seem to think is appropriate for left wing politicians. At least the left wing politicians have some semblance of morals and a concern for people who aren't in some over privileged inner circle and/or raking in money for themselves on the back of an epidemic. I'm not going to open a can of worms on here  by commenting on the disgraceful so called "purge". 
Home
Events
Sign In

Sign In



Or sign in with one of these services

Search
×
    Search In
×
×
  • Create New...