Following careful consideration and a series of public consultation exercises with parish councils and the public, selected lights were turned off between midnight and 5:30am in a significant number of mainly rural parishes across the county.
Unlike some other local authorities we've not turned every light off at midnight. We have been careful to ensure that some lights remain on all night so that the impact of the scheme on individual streets is minimised.
The introduction of these measures stopped in 2015.
However, we still believe that part night lighting has its place in those areas where it has already been installed. We intend to retain it in those areas.
Since the end of the project we have monitored crime and accident statistics and responded to concerns raised by the public.
Given the very low level of complaints we receive about part night street lighting and the lack of evidence to link those concerns with increases in crime or accidents, we now consider this to be the established operating regime for those lights.
We're confident that the lights that currently operate a part night lighting regime don't pose an increased risk of a crime being committed, or an accident occurring which could be directly attributed to the fact that they are turned off at midnight.
Therefore, in future, we'll only turn lights back to a dusk to dawn regime if specifically asked to do so by the police or our traffic and safety team.