A MONEY-saving scheme to switch off street lights at night could be scaled back over fears of increased crime and safety.
Highland Council will this week consider ending a plan which has seen every second street light switched off in a bid to reduce the £2 million electricity bill for its 50,000 street lights.
A report will also recommend discontinuing trials of a switch off between midnight and 6am in areas where there is strong resistance, but will say that it should continue in areas where there is support from the community.
The report to the council will say the introduction of white light and dimming has been generally successful so should continue.
Some £60,000 a year is being saved but only £5000 from the lighting reduction trials and £55,000 from conversion to low-energy white light, which has been applied to 2200 columns.
Many of the smaller communities among the 40 that took part in lighting reduction supported the project, but some slightly larger ones had concerns. These were typically where there were 50 to 150 lights, in the likes of Kinlochleven, Dunvegan on Skye and Banavie near Fort William.
According to the report: "These communities tended to have a village hall or hotel which meant that people were more likely to be out after darkness. The villages sometimes had some minor crime, vandalism and thefts."
The trials had the stipulation that if there were criminal incidents in a test area the street lights could be switched on again at short notice, although no such incidents were reported by police.
However, one letter from a resident in Jemimaville on the Black Isle attributed a burglary to the lights being off, and an incident of vandalism was reported by a resident in Tomatin, south of Inverness
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article