KING'S COLLEGE FIELDS (FLOODLIGHTING) (Hansard, 17 January 1975)

§ Mr. F. P. Crowder (Ruislip-Northwood)
The site with which this debate is concerned is the proposed floodlighting area in King's College playing fields in my constituency.
I make these observations against the background of the recent excellent Ministerial statements by the Chancellor of the Exchequer emphasising that councils must limit their expenditure to what is absolutely inescapable and to that made on 9th December by the Secretary of State for Energy indicating that the use of electricity should be restricted and especially asking those concerned to consider urgently in the new year whether lights used for floodlighting and external display were necessary.
This matter is causing great concern to local residents in my constituency. The total area of King's College fields was conveyed from King's College, Cambridge to the urban district council of Ruislip- 986 Northwood, as it then was, as long ago as 21st September 1938. The land was to be used as an open space for the benefit of the public and, accordingly, every member of the public had the right to walk, and was allowed to walk, across those fields and to use them for recreational purposes.
It is right for me to tell the House that on 7th August last year what I can only describe as a threatening letter from the director of parks and recreation added insult and injury to this matter which I raise on behalf of local residents in relation to that area and in particular to floodlighting.
The letter reads as follows: It has come to my notice that a number of people are using the above area without the Council's permission. It is believed that access to the play area has been gained either by climbing the surrounding fences, or directly through the rear gates of properties which back on to the field. This area is Council property which is to be used exclusively for authorised sporting activities, and any unauthorised entry is a trespass. This applies irrespective of the method of entry, and in the interests of security I have to inform you that the Council will take proceedings against anyone found using the land without permission. That was from the London Borough of Hillingdon, and it was signed by the director of parks and recreation.
It will be appreciated that, to many older residents, suddenly receiving a letter of that kind, bearing in mind the history of the area, was a cause of dismay and distress. As a result of the somewhat high-handed and arrogant attitude of those responsible, a local action committee was formed. The council received a petition by some 700 residents and approximately 50 letters of protest.
A meeting on the site was held in July 1973 between the Ruislip Residents' Association, members of the council and the director of parks. A categorical assurance was given that, if lighting was contemplated, it would be limited to lights on 12-foot poles.
In due course that was followed by a letter from the planning department of the council to local residents saying that permission was now being sought for eight floodlighting pylons. That was the first indication the local residents had that the hard play area was contemplated—

§ Mr. Crowder
Accordingly, in September 1974 a further letter from the director of planning was received quoting a height of 12 metres—approximately 40 ft.—for these pylons, with no mention of power consumption or luminosity.
It has been stated by the council that the main utilisation of these lights will be for training purposes only. I wonder, therefore, how the council in this time of need of fuel conservation can possibly seek to justify such a professional type of installation. I should have thought that the original training lights on 12 ft. poles which were contemplated would have been more than sufficient to meet present needs, particularly having regard to the fuel situation and to the nuisance which will be caused to people whose homes adjoin the fields in what constitutes a semi-rural area.
A letter dated 30th December 1974 from the director of planning stated that approximately £11,000 had been included in the programme for 1974–75 for the supply, erection and installation of floodlighting, together with an item of £3,000 for the maintenance of the pitch plus the cost of lighting for 1975–76. Such expenditure on electricity by the local council is in our present economic situation wholly unjustified.

§ The Under-Secretary of State for Energy (Mr. John Smith)
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood (Mr. Crowder) for raising the subject of the Government's decision on floodlighting because it is one aspect of my right hon. Friend's package of energy saving measures which has not been much discussed in the House since 9th December. The debate gives me the opportunity to explain the Government's viewpoint.
I am sure that my right hon. Friend will be happy to note the generous endorsement which the hon. Gentleman gave to the package of energy-saving measures he announced on 9th December. The issue of floodlighting also demonstrates some of the problems and contradictions 988 which we faced in formulating our energy-saving programme.
Perhaps I should begin by setting out precisely what is the Government's decision on floodlighting which was referred to by the hon. Gentleman. My right hon. Friend said: I do not propose to ban floodlighting at this time. I would, however, ask those concerned to consider urgently in the new year whether the lights so used are really necessary outside the hours when they have maximum impact."—[Official Report, 9th December 1974; Vol. 883, c. 30.] So the present position is that the Government have used their powers under the Fuel and Electricity (Control) Act 1973 to ban the use of electricity for external lighting, advertising, signs, notices and posters, during daylight hours—a ban which came into force, as the hon. Member will know, from the beginning of this week—but we have not extended it as far as floodlighting at the the present time. That is not necessarily to say that we never shall. We have made it clear that the measures introduced so far constitute an interim package which we intend to extend and reinforce in the future. But we have decided not to take the step of banning floolighting for the present at any rate, beyond a request that those who use floodlighting should consider that use critically. Let me explain why we have adopted that position.
First, if we were to ban private lighting completely, the kind of thing that might be included would be the illumination of buildings, bridges, objects such as statutes, and amenity areas such as football pitches. There are other areas which would have to be considered, such as parks and open spaces and lighting on motorways. This is not a comprehensive list, but it gives some idea of what we are talking about.
The next question we have to ask is, how much energy would we save if we were to ban floodlighting? The answer is "very little" in relation to our overall energy consumption. I am afraid I cannot give any very precise quantitative estimate of the saving but it would be only a small fraction of 1 per cent. of our total consumption. The fact that we would not save very much energy is not of course conclusive. Banning floodlighting would be bound to have a psychological effect, in making people 989 more aware of the seriousness of our purpose. I hope that no one is in any doubt about the seriousness of our purpose in view of the price we have to pay for the oil we import.
Moreover, energy conservation is very much an area where we have to build up a major effect out of innumerable small and diverse causes, and every contribution which can be achieved is to be welcomed. But the fact that floodlighting consumes only a relatively small amount of energy still has to be weighed against the disadvantages which would flow from banning it.
These disadvantages are many and various, and I can only try to illustrate them by citing some instances. First, there is the fact that we in the United Kingdom benefit very considerably from our tourist trade. If we were to ban floodlighting, it would mean having to present a very sombre and discouraging face to the world and to people in other countries who want to come here and see some of our great buildings. One does not have to go very far from this Chamber to discover how greatly London shows up to advantage at night. All that would have to go if we prohibited floodlighting and the saving could well be offset, to some extent at least, by the loss of foreign exchange which we would suffer if fewer tourists came here.
This aspect is particularly important in European Heritage Year when we are doing our best to improve and draw attention to our wealth of fine buildings. In September we shall be hosts in London, for the first time since 1930, to the International Commission on Illumination. Floodlighting is one of the principal subjects of the conference, and successful schemes may lead to export orders for British equipment. This indicates the intricacy of some of the decisions we have to take.
Another factor is security. I am not referring just to Northern Ireland, though the relevance of this point to the situation there is obvious, but to all the instances—old buildings, churches and cathedrals, Government and defence establishments, and many others—where floodlighting is not just a way of showing how attractive a building is but has a practical value of this kind, too.
990 Suggestions are sometimes made that significant energy savings could be achieved by a reduction in the standard of road lighting, particularly on motorways and trunk roads, for which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment is responsible. My right hon. Friend the Minister for Transport has this matter under review, but it is necessary to keep constantly in mind the road safety aspects of this question when weighing up any possible advantages to be achieved in energy saving. When lighting was severely restricted at the time of the energy crisis at the beginning of last year, this was accompanied by a rise in the number of accidents.
We must bear in mind also that for any campaign to save energy to be effective, it must last for a period of a year, not just for a few months. Within the context of a campaign lasting for a few months there are severe measures which we could take and for which, I am confident, we would receive public support. Different considerations apply to a campaign which it is intended should last for a period of years.
For these reasons, we have decided not to ban floodlighting completely at this time, although we certainly considered it. I stress again that this does not mean that we have washed our hands of the whole matter and lost interest in it. On the contrary, we think that there are all sorts of ways in which floodlighting of buildings could be so operated as to save energy without suffering all the disadvantages that I have referred to. In some instances it might be possible to restrict floodlighting to only some nights of the week. In others, floodlighting might be operated only for the first part of the night, at times when people are around. These are only examples. The point which I am making is that energy saving by restrictions on floodlighting could much more easily and beneficially be achieved on a voluntary basis, if those concerned are willing to co-operate, than on a compulsory one.
I said earlier that floodlighting was a good example of the sort of problems we face in an energy-saving programme. I will explain why. We are continually faced by the fact that it is not the Government who can turn off the switches or install insulation or operate the boilers efficiently or do the many things that save 991 energy. It is the consumers themselves who take the decisions which make or mar our energy-saving campaign.
This is not to say that the Government are powerless. On the contrary, we can do, and are doing, quite a lot. We can move to realistic energy prices and ensure that consumers are aware of the cost of what they consume. We can sometimes lay down standards, as we are proposing to do over thermal insulation of new dwellings. We can set a good example, as we are doing, in our own buildings. We can give a lead, for instance, through the publicity campaign which we are about to launch. We can talk and discuss, urge, persuade and inform. What we cannot do, obviously, is stand over each consumer of energy and make sure that he or she uses it economically.
The criminal law can be used in some cases. We have already done that in relation to space heating, advertising signs, and speed limits, and we may do so in relation to some more areas later on.
But what we are aiming at is a change of attitudes in every sector of consumption, so that every consumer thinks and acts for himself voluntarily in relation to energy saving, rather than at a massive statutory structure which tries to govern every flick of a switch and turn of a dial. We believe that this is the only basis, in a democratic society, on which a long-term effect can be based. We can and will use the law sometimes but not as a complete, or even a very adequate, answer to the long-term problem.
Now I should like to turn to the particular case of floodlighting which the hon. Member raised. I am coming to it last because I wanted to sketch in the reasoning behind our decisions on floodlighting, which will, I hope, explain our approach to this case. The hon. Member says that Hillingdon Borough are wasting energy by floodlighting a hard play area in Ruislip. He complained 992 on a slightly wider front than that, but a Minister from the Department of Energy cannot get involved in the rights and wrongs of a local dispute in which, for all I know, there may be two sides to the case.
We appreciate his concern that the campaign for energy saving should be a success, and I regret that I cannot comment on the facts of the case which he mentions. The borough council is not answerable to the Government for the ways in which it consumes energy, and it is only one out of many millions of cases in which we hope energy consumption will be examined. We cannot examine each one of them. We rely on people weighing up their own decisions carefully. Without entering in any way into the merits of this dispute, we hope that generally local authorities and private persons will bear energy saving very much in mind.
My right hon. Friend explained in his statement on 9th December that we would set in hand urgent discussions with local authorities to discuss energy saving. The letters to the relevant associations have already gone out, but we shall not be going over particular instances of energy consumption like the one which the hon. Gentleman raised today. However, we shall certainly want to explore with them the possibilities in the areas of consumption for which they are responsible.
I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving me, and the House, an opportunity to consider some of the implications of the Government's decision on floodlighting. I am sorry if my response may not have been as appropriate to the local circumstances as he might wish, but I thank him for providing an opportunity to consider the wider question involved.