MONDAY 9 JUNE 2003

PROFESSOR PAUL MURDIN, DR HELEN WALKER, MR GUY HURST, MR BOB MIZON AND DR CHRIS BADDILEY

  Q40  Chairman: No shares any more, they are on an offshore island.

  Dr Baddiley: Focus DIY said more or less the same thing. B&Q is the only one so far that has made a positive move. Again, it is up to the buying public and how they promote them.

  Q41  Mr Dhanda: Can you give us some indication as to what kind of quantitative response you have had? Have you put out letters, calls to lots of organisations and lots of buildings to do something about their lighting, and typically what response do you get?

  Dr Baddiley: Usually very little.

  Mr Mizon: Over the years the Campaign has corresponded with organisations large and small, with individuals, and lots of the correspondence we get is from people aggrieved by the light trespass from establishments large and small. Most people—and environmental health officers agree with me about this, I have spoken to lots of them—do not realise they are causing a problem to anybody. About 60 or 70% of offenders will do something immediately about the problems they are causing. Of course, there is always the rump who will not do anything and there is very little that one can do to persuade them to take action, and lives are continually blighted because of this. It is not just an astronomer's problem. Millions of people nationwide are troubled by stray light. They feel that there is nothing that can be done about it.

  Q42  Mr Harris: Could I ask a supplementary. I am interested in the response that you might get from people where you personally or colleagues have asked neighbours or whatever to turn off the light or change the light specifically. Did you approach that vicar? Have you ever gone to a vicar and said, "Look, these flood lights are . . ."

  Mr Mizon: I suggested to the teachers at the school that they should approach the vicar. I do not know whether they did or did not. I have certainly approached my local churches.

  Q43  Mr Harris: What happened?

  Mr Mizon: One of my local churches was recently heavily vandalised by the light of its own exterior security lamps and I did suggest to them they should amend these either to have a completely dark site or to have the lamps so that they did not shine in too many directions, only shine downwards. They said that they would consider the matter but nothing has happened yet.

  Dr Baddiley: This is throughout the country. I was up at John O'Groats hoping to observe the eclipse and our man for Caithness lives right by the cliffs at the edge right at the top and he said he has been troubled considerably by a security light on a farm house and they refuse to do anything about it. That is on Dunnet Head which is about as far north as you can get.

  Q44  Dr Iddon: What kind of interaction do you have with local authorities? Do you talk to local authorities in your individual area or the Local Government Association? Can you perhaps expand on that.

  Dr Baddiley: We have over 120 local officers throughout the country. Some of these are very active and a few of them manage to actually look at planning applications when they come in to see if there are any serious problems with light. That is the exception to the rule. There are just a few councils that have a lighting clause and in some cases we have persuaded them to do so, but most do not. Where there is a clause at least the plans for the new development have to show the lighting and it has to meet certain minimum requirements on overspill. But what is minimum to one person is not to another. They unusually, for example in my area, allow one lux as being acceptable overspill in new sports lighting. I am an astronomer but I know plenty of people who are not astronomers who find one lux, which is four times moonlight level, quite unacceptable.

  Q45  Dr Iddon: Have you tried to engage one of the national associations, the one I mentioned the Local Government Association, to get their interest and get them to pressurise the local authorities?

  Dr Baddiley: I have not had any personal dealings with local government besides the Worcestershire Council and also the Malvern Hills District Council which I have had dealings with over a number of years on and off. There are various relationships with various councils. The Civic Society is another possible lever to councils, to local government.

  Mr Mizon: There is a complete spectrum of responses from local authorities. Some of them are very proactive, to use this modern word, and some of them seem totally confused by the whole affair. There are hundreds and hundreds of local authorities and, as I say, the response is completely varied and often quite unpredictable.

  Q46  Dr Iddon: Do you know of any local authorities which have written guidelines which planning officers use to establish whether the planning application is going to result in pollution of the sky or not?

  Dr Baddiley: We do have a list which has been passed on.

  Q47  Dr Iddon: That is very useful, thank you, and do you keep a tally of how many local authorities have actually used legislation against light pollution?

  Dr Baddiley: We are only 120 local officer strong, so it is a bit difficult to keep the statistics. If we had more members I think we would probably be able to do that sort of thing. Certainly in my own area I know of a few cases where there has been an ordinance and there has been action. There was the Guildford case of a Skybeam where it went through a series of cases and came back to a public inquiry. The finding agreed that the Skybeam was clearly an advertisement, which it clearly was in the first place. Indeed, there are other cases in my own area. The local Ambulance Service decided to illuminate their property and put globe lights round it. Fortunately there was a planning clause already in place which required them to submit their lighting scheme for approval. The council rung me up and asked me if I knew about this. I did not know they had done this, so I put in an objection and they were required to remove the lights and resubmit plans, so it can happen.

  Q48  Dr Iddon: I am talking really about known observatories in this country. Do the local authorities who are responsible for those areas notify you that a planning application is going to be considered that might result in pollution of the sky? Is there any requirement for them to do that?

  Dr Baddiley: Not that we have heard.

  Dr Iddon: None of them do it voluntarily.

  Q49  Chairman: We are told that the Czech Republic have legislation. Does it work?

  Mr Hurst: I think it is too early to say, it has only just happened. I would add that I have heard in the last few days that a group of astronomers have been invited to the Spanish government for an inquiry like this and they asked if would we support it, so I wonder if there is a certain amount of momentum amongst European governments at the moment towards this issue.

  Q50  Chairman: So the jury is still out on whether legislation works?

  Dr Baddiley: It is too early.

  Mr Mizon: You cannot wave a magic wand.

  Q51  Dr Iddon: That begs the question, it is a European issue, so have you ever approached the European Parliament or European members?

  Mr Mizon: Yes, in 1993 I went to Brussels to present a petition to the European Parliament and it was rejected on the grounds of subsidiarity. I wrote to Margo Wallström, the European Environment Commissioner, a few months ago and got more or less the same reply.

  Q52  Dr Murrison: I am very glad that somebody mentioned leylandii because of course there is a Bill before the House at the moment, the High Hedges Bill. The reason it is before the House is because other remedies have failed. Enforcement action has failed, and civil action has failed in a very common matter. Are you aware of any civil actions that might have been taken by individuals or organisations against offending light sources?

  Mr Mizon: The best known case is Bonwick v Brighton & Hove Council in August 2000. Mr Bonwick went to court against Brighton & Hove Council, which had erected lights on a neighbouring building which shone very brightly into his premises. Having made a site visit the judge found for him and he received costs and damages to the tune of several hundred pounds and the lights were ordered to be extinguished until such time as they did not shine into his premises. There is the famous Stonehaven case that was more to do with fish than people. Stonehaven Angling Association took the local tennis club to court for shining lights in the river and disturbing the habits of the fish, and again they won their case against very well-organised opposition from the tennis community and the lights were ordered again to be turned on only at specific times re-angled, I believe, and the wattage to be lowered. So there have been cases where light pollution has been seen by a judge to be a nuisance but unfortunately it does not change the law.

  Dr Walker: It should be commented that Brighton & Hove Council of course have recently passed light pollution ordnances locally, I think it was in April of this year, and likewise Armagh has considered some local ordinances to alleviate light pollution so people do things and local authorities do try and take action.

  Q53  Mr Harris: Does not that mitigate against any possible move by the government to take action? If these local authorities have already taken action does that not undermine the case for legislation?

  Mr Mizon: They are only guidelines. Are they enforced? Does anybody really do anything about it? The desperate people who write to me whose lives have been blighted by light pollution very rarely get much action. I know for a fact that in some of those cases the local authority—

  Q54  Mr Harris: You say you welcome these ordinances. How can you welcome them on the one hand and then on the other hand say they are not enough?

  Mr Mizon: Any move towards positive action on light pollution is welcome but, of course, it just is not enough at the moment. We are drowning in a sea of light and we need more teeth to enforce these so-called guidelines.

  Q55  Dr Murrison: The point I was trying to make using the analogy of High Hedges Bill is there has been recognition and legislation to control the nuisance of high hedges, leylandii. Would you see this as an analogous case for legislation or do you think there is any mileage at all in government and local authorities' reliance upon civil actions? From what you say there are cases that have been pursued quite successfully.

  Mr Mizon: Most people troubled by light would not go to court about it. They would not risk the expense and trouble of going to court. I think that somebody who is troubled by light, whether or not he or she is an astronomer, ought to be able to find easy redress, just as in the case of noise, vicious dogs, nasty smells. Why should light be any different?

  Q56  Dr Murrison: Can I move on and give you a quote from the government who told this Committee that: "It is extremely difficult to design a feasible means of assessing external light for statutory planning control purposes . . . It is therefore highly doubtful that a practical enforcement regime could be based on measurements." That is a bit of a cop-out, is it not?

  Dr Baddiley: It is. As I mentioned to you the other day in my own submission, I did try to answer the points on means of measurement, and I think I would have difficulty covering it in sufficient detail in this forum in a few minutes, but there are means of doing it. There are the two issues, light intrusion, the light levels being measures by lux meters extended to millilum which could be achieved with modifications without too much difficulty. Basically putting a lens or mirror in front of them to gather more light. There is the question of the larger global issue of sky glow where a means of measurement would probably involve a photometer that could be built to certain specifications. It is not difficult using standard commercial parts to build a photometer that could monitor, for example, the cloud base, because the cloud base is a mirror to what is on the ground and what is coming up from the ground, directly or indirectly, and that is less critical to atmospheric conditions. Whilst star counting is dependent on the atmospheric conditions at the time. The trouble with star counting is it is a double whammy. You get absorption by the moisture in the air and scatter from the light caused from the moisture, whereas that is not the case with monitoring the cloud base or just satellite observation. The trouble with satellite observation is it is expensive, it is global and it is not of a sufficiently fine scale to be done locally, but nevertheless it gives the trend and this has been going on for quite some years.

  Q57  Dr Murrison: As MPs we all have experience of people having problems with noise and trying to encourage our local authorities to take it seriously. That usually involves an environmental health officer going out with an audiometer. You can measure noise quite easily. It is difficult enough sometimes to get environmental health officers to do that kind of assessment. I would have thought the EHOs' reaction to this sort of thing will be ten times worse. Do you agree?

  Dr Baddiley: I think there might be a reluctance. They are probably heavily overloaded with work as it is.

  Q58  Dr Murrison: Technically it is possible?

  Dr Baddiley: Technically it is possible. It is not difficult to aim a photometer, a luxometer with a modified directional lens at a light and get a reading. That is not difficult and it would give you an absolute reading and that would be quite fine.

  Q59  Dr Murrison: Would it not be easier and achieve the same purpose by banning certain sorts of luminaires?

  Dr Baddiley: It would indeed. It would be a very sensible approach, I agree. We talked briefly about the Czech law where it is, I believe, now illegal to have a light that is visible beyond a properly boundary under penalty of a considerable fine. It may seem drastic and it is not something that you can introduce suddenly. It is something that perhaps you could introduce over a long period of time so that there is a possibility of people modifying their lights in due time and giving them a timescale to do something about it but, in the ultimate, something like that which may seem pretty drastic would be 100% effective.

  Mr Mizon: A good start would be the phasing out of the 500 watt security light purely from an energy point of view. Even if you do not want to see the stars why have half a lighthouse in your back garden?