Streetlights across Swindon will be dimmed to save money and energy.

The plans were first revealed as part of sweeping Swindon Borough Council cuts to fill a £32 million hole in the authority's operating budget.

After a trial in a number of streets in Old Town in the autumn, the council has now announced that the scheme launched from Monday (February 19).

But one councillor has expressed his concern over the plans, with fears that dimmer streetlights could encourage crime and be dangerous for traffic and walkers.

The 18,000 LED streetlights across Swindon will operate at full brightness until 10pm, before dimming with a further reduction at midnight.

They will then return to full strength at 5am.

The hope is to reduce the council’s electricity bill by up to 25 per cent, with street lighting accounting for around 34 per cent of the council’s electricity use in 2022/23.

But Councillor Nick Gardiner, shadow cabinet member for communities and public safety, was concerned about the ramifications of reducing the brightness of street lights: “The obvious concerns are that if the lighting isn't kept on as long or it's reduced in strength, then it makes crime hot-spots.”

He explained that not only could less illumination make streets less safe, it could prevent police from getting high quality evidence from CCTV cameras.

Cllr Gardiner said that the dimming could be delivered well if in collaboration with the police so that more dangerous areas were better lit, rather than a blanket dimming of all lights.

However, the Conservative councillor expressed concern that low resourcing in the council meant the changes had not been adequately planned and would not be well delivered.

He said: “We need proper project management within the authority that is going to do more trials and assessment of feedback. 

"If it's purely led on a cost reduction basis, then it will definitely be a failure and it would be putting costs ahead of people’s safety."

He said that without greater tests and trials, the dimming of streetlights could face a similar fate to the new recycling collection system.

“It's the same underlying problem: if it doesn't have the right level of officer support and resourcing to be able to ensure that it has managed and delivered successfully, then we're at  risk of it not being delivered well.”

According to the council, a ‘successful’ test of the dimming was undertaken in six streets in Old Town last Autumn.

It says that reducing LED light output by 25 to 50 per cent has been shown to be barely noticeable to the human eye, and around 7,000 streetlights are excluded from the programme because they illuminate main roads, junctions and pedestrian crossings.

Labour councillor Junab Ali added: “I don't see a huge problem because at 25 per cent dimming people would not know that the lights had been dimmed, and there is a huge saving.

“If there are any problems where the lights are dimmed and it affects elderly people or women walking at night because it is too dark we will have to look into that.”

Councillor Chris Watts, SBC's cabinet member for the environment and transport, said: “Before rolling out these changes, we wanted to be confident that adjusting the operation of the Borough’s streetlights won’t compromise road safety or residents’ personal safety at night. That’s why we first undertook a trial to test the approach.

“The trials demonstrated that the output of the majority of Swindon’s streetlights can be reduced between 10pm and 5am without a discernible difference to existing lighting levels. A similar approach has already been implemented in many other parts of the country.”