PROPOSALS to dim Barnsley’s street lighting in order to save cash from soaring energy bills will not come into force until a full investigation has been completed - after a councillor urged the council to ditch the plan due to safety concerns.
Councils across the country have faced huge financial challenges in the wake of years of central funding cuts, with many forced to review their budgets for local services - including street lights - to save money.
Some have made large savings on carbon emissions and energy bills by switching to LED lights - such as Barnsley Council - or by operating partial night-time switch-off regimes for lamps in their area.
Council bosses outlined proposals to potentially reduce lights’ operational hours in order to save cash and reduce energy use - but the Chronicle can reveal any decision to do so will be put on hold until a full probe is carried out.
Coun Chris Wray, who represents the Dodworth ward, spoke out against the proposals and said the dimming of lights would have an adverse impact on safety.
“The dimming of street lighting is madness and re-raises criticism that only the town centre seems to matter to this Labour council,” he added.
“The College of Policing, through 13 studies across decades, shows that improved street lighting significantly reduced crime.
“If increased lighting decreases crime, what does decreased lighting do?
“Adding to this, the Labour council in Ealing, which had dimmed street lights in 2016, saw the effects of dimming lights and in 2022 - through significant demand over concerns from women and girls - it increased street lighting.
“The simple fact is that despite the impact, though it is still worth noting that studies with sufficient time and quantity only show that increased lighting decreases crime, decreased lighting makes people feel unsafe and cuts them off from parts of their town or village.
“Increased lighting decreases crime and helps the feeling of safety.
“A lot of it is also done to the perception of such a thing so the idea needs nipping in the bud.”
It’s estimated that just over half of English councils with responsibility for street lights have chosen to dim them or switch them off overnight over the last decade or so.
Barnsley Council said that without interventions, its energy bill from street lights - this year alone - would have exceeded £5m due to rocketing costs.
Coun James Higginbottom, cabinet spokesperson for environment and highways, confirmed ‘options are being explored’.
“There will be no changes made during the period and there’s certainly no intention to go in and switch them all off,” he said.
“What we are doing is rightly exploring options to continue to achieve savings both financially and with our energy use.
“We’ve modernised our lighting with LEDs and have considerably improved our energy efficiency as a result.
“We were using 14.4 million kilowatt hours of power annually but that’s decreased by 65 per cent to 5.2 million.
“Community safety is at absolute forefront of this idea and it will be carefully considered by cabinet at the appropriate time.”
