Leeds City Council is asking residents to take part in a consultation concerning their feelings about switching off certain streetlights in a bid to save money.
This move is very typical of city and county councils across the country, which are all considering new and more resourceful ways to slash their bills as public funding continues to be trimmed by Westminster. Similarly, now is the time for households to consider personal funding and how they might cut their own domestic budgets.
In Leeds, there are over 92,000 streetlights which rack up bills of around £4 million every single year - not to mention the vast amounts of emissions produced as a result. The council is asking for residents' thoughts on the safe switching-off of one in eight lamps on main roads and one in 14 on residential roads between midnight and 06:00, which could potentially save around £1.3 million over the next decade.
Councillor Richard Lewis, executive board member responsible for development and the economy, said: "In these challenging economic times, this means looking differently at all of the things we do" - and the same applies whether you are a councillor tasked with lighting a city ecologically or a homeowner in charge of keeping bills down.
While individuals may not find they have 92,000 lights on their property nor rack up multi-million pound electricity bills, the principle of trimming budgets and making valuable savings via lighting and energy bills are still the same.
Switching off porch lights overnight once everybody has come home for the evening could save valuable pennies across the year, as could carrying out retrofit lighting projects to replace older, less cost-effective lighting solutions with newer technologies which won't consume vast amounts of power in the same way.
