Cornwall street lighting costs to soar by £1.3m

Cornwall Council said street lighting had been hit by energy price inflation

The cost of lighting Cornwall's streets at night is set to increase by £1.3m a year.

The figure was revealed at a meeting of the council's customer services scrutiny committee.

The cost prompted a decision last month to begin turning off more than half of Cornwall's 56,000 lights between midnight and 05:00 GMT.

Councillors heard that as well as the expense, the lights currently produce a third of the council's total emissions.

A council spokesperson said: "Street lighting is subject to the effects of considerable energy cost inflation.

"The prices went up by 92% last October - effectively doubling - and have changed little since then," reported the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

The spokesperson said: "We are doing what we can to mitigate these increases, including introducing the LED bulb replacement programme which, in turn, enables the night-time switch off.

"It allows us to dim the lights that stay on, as well as turning lights on later in the evening, and off earlier in the morning."

The council added that lighting would remain in certain locations throughout the night for safety reasons.

Those areas include traffic junctions, subways, pedestrian crossings, parts of town centres, areas with CCTV equipment and entrances to hospitals and police stations.