Council saves £45k with part-night lights

SOME £45,000 has been saved by the council by switching about 27% of its street lights to part-night.

To date, 4,900 lights across Carmarthenshire have been switched off between 12.30am and 5.30am.

The council’s Environment Scrutiny Committee also heard that a further 750 part-night cells had been installed in lighting columns owned by town and community councils.

A third of lights in council town centre car parks are also being turned off during the early hours and lighting near the Discovery Centre at North Dock was now on a timer to go off at 11pm rather than stay on all night. Lighting time had also been reduced on the Llanelli promenade.

The council’s public lighting engineers are continuing to work with the police to identify which lights go part-night.

Only 41 complaints have been received to date, and where practicable, these have been resolved, mainly through consultation with the police.

Most of the work undertaken has been in the southern part of the county and lighting engineers are now working on the northern part.

When asked by Cllr Hugh Richards on how much money had been saved since going part-night; public lighting engineer Nigel Francis said: “To date, about £45,000. Energy went up by 18-20% last year, and next year’s prediction to date indicates we are looking at a 5% decrease from this year, but until April when all our electricity has been purchased it’s very difficult to predict the final figure. Some authorities are saving more, but we already had very low consumption lamps to begin with. We have also had and are having a lot of new traffic calming initiatives in the county which require higher standards of illumination, so that also has an effect.”

Director of Technical Services Richard Workman pointed out that it wasn’t just about saving money.

“This is also about carbon savings as well,” he said. “We are trying to reduce our carbon footprint, not just financial.”

The committee heard that the public lighting section was also being consulted on lighting proposals on all new housing developments in the county and all new estates in future will be designed to use dimmable LED lanterns including Section 38 orders for adoptable housing sites.

The part-night lighting programme was implemented following a review carried out by a Task and Finish Group of councillors from the Environment Scrutiny Committee.

Press note: For further information contact Carmarthenshire County Council communications officer Diane Phillips on 01267 224913.