As I reported last month, Cambridgeshire County Council signed a £100M ‘PFI’ contract with Balfour Beatty in 2011 to replace Cambridgeshire’s street lights. No effective consultation took place when the contract was being drawn up, leaving parish and district councils to pick up the pieces when work was about to start and the problems caused by the contract became all too apparent.

The botched contract paid no respect to features like the eighteen ‘heritage’ lamp columns between The Row and the church, originally installed by the district council.

The parish council was told that the lamp fittings on top of the heritage columns would be replaced with ordinary modern street lamp fittings unless they either paid for more appropriate replacement ‘heritage’ style lamps, or took over the running costs of the street lights themselves.

Sutton Parish Council originally decided to let Balfour Beatty install modern fittings, but has reconsidered in the light of more accurate information from Balfour Beatty about what this entailed, and will now be paying for replacement ‘heritage’ fittings. Like parish councils across Cambridgeshire, our parish council has found itself in a very difficult situation and has made the best decision it could in the circumstances.