HUTTON Rudby people are to have their say on a controversial £77,000 lighting scheme.

A special meeting is to be held to hear opinions about the possibility of placing 60 Victorian-style street lights around the village.

The parish council discussed the scheme on Monday and chairman Coun John Richardson said: "I think we need more information about other designs. We need a full parish meeting and the sooner this is done the better."

The lights have been offered through a Hambleton council heritage scheme. Apparently only existing lights can be replaced with the heritage lanterns and no extra lights can be erected. The five-metre high Victorian gas lamp styles have been erected in Great Ayton.

However, Hutton Rudby did not have a gas supply until 1992. Critics have said the design is wrong; some are worried that lantern light might shine into their bedrooms rather than the pavements; others have asked whether fake Victorian designs would appear silly outside modern homes. The Council for the Protection of Rural England also thinks the lights are unsuitable.

On Monday evening, Mr Mike Hill, of East Side, met the parish council and a Hambleton officer.

He said: "My concern is about the aesthetics rather than light levels. This proposed design is a fairly poor mock-up of a gas lamp. In the days of gas lighting there was no gas in Hutton Rudby. This design has a cross-bar to be used by the imaginary gas lighter for his ladder. But the cross-bar has been raised to stop people swinging on it and the whole column has been stretched out of proportion.

"It is very much a period piece chosen from random. Hutton Rudby has houses from all sorts of periods and it seems wrong to put a thing like that in a village like this."

Coun Richardson said: "Hambleton council sent out 240 leaflets to the residents living near the proposed lanterns. Thirty were returned.

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