Streetlights could be dimmed across Slough under cost-saving plans set to be approved by leaders at Slough Borough Council.

Under the plans, streetlights on residential streets could be made up to 40 per cent dimmer to save the council up to £112,000 a year.

Slough Borough Council says the move will ‘go unnoticed by most people' and help it to ‘save carbon, energy, and money and to continue to provide essential street lighting services to its residents’.

The council first considered introducing an ‘adaptive street lighting policy’ – where the level of street lighting changes throughout the night – in 2023. It says rising energy prices have cost it an extra £600,000 a year.

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It has already carried out three trials in 17 different parts of the borough, most of them residential areas, with the first taking place in February 2023.

Slough Borough Council says it launched an email address for people to give feedback. It says that before the trial some residents raised fears that the reduced lighting ‘would lead to an increase in crime and impact on public safety’.

However it says that during the trial ‘no complaints were received with respect to the changing lighting levels’.

The council’s proposed new policy for dimmed lighting says the trials showed that ‘even a 50 per cent reduction in lighting in each ward, when introduced gradually over the evening and night, would go unnoticed by most people’.

It also says that adaptive lighting can make roads safer. It says that adjusting lighting depending on volume of traffic, time of day and whether conditions ‘ensures that areas with higher pedestrian or vehicle activity are better lit’.

And it says that ‘optimised’ lit roads can help all road users to see and react to hazards more quickly.

The policy says: “Overall, an adaptive street lighting policy enhances safety by ensuring that lighting levels are appropriate for the current conditions, making roads safer for everyone while also conserving energy, while not leading to any actual anti-social behaviour and crime.”

Currently, streetlights in Slough are lit at 70 per cent brightness on all roads from dusk to dawn.

But under the new plan, those in residential areas would be lit at 50 per cent from dusk until 10pm, falling to 40 per cent until midnight, and then to 30 per cent until dawn. A-roads would be lit at a constant 60 per cent.

Members of Slough’s cabinet – its group of leading councillors – are set to approve the plans at a meeting on Monday, November 18.