PART night lighting is set to begin in Penarth this month.

Contractors will start the installation process in the town in July before it is rolled out from east to west in the vale, a process which is estimated to take 12 weeks.

The proposed scheme was agreed to by the Vale cabinet last autumn as part of efforts to reduce energy consumption and will see street lamps switched off between midnight and 6am.

The Vale Council said changing its street lighting policy to retain their LEDs and part light 70 per cent of its remaining stock at midnight would reduce CO2 emissions by 1,338 tonnes.

They also estimated that savings would be worth £371,862.71 a year as a result of the scheme.

A part night lighting board was established to oversee a risk assessment in order to determine which areas would be subject to the plan.

The council is now ready to install photoelectric cells to lamps which have been marked out for part night lighting.

A sign will be present on the lighting column of each lamp saying it will be switched off between midnight and 6am.

An interactive map on the website will be updated with the progress of the installations as they occur.

Cabinet Member for Leisure and Visible Services, Cllr Gwyn John, said: “We have undertaken rigorous risk assessments to ensure the safety of residents as we introduce part night lighting to the Vale of Glamorgan.

Part night lighting along with the installation of LED lamps will ensure we achieve significant energy savings over the next few years and will have considerable environmental benefits for the area.”

Simon Nicholas has campaigned on street lighting issues and has formally objected to the proposals for the street lighting energy reduction strategy in the Vale.

He has said that the Vale council's decision to switch off lights would not save much more energy or more money than dimming.

"The key questions are about the cost of implementing the scheme and what energy savings will be made. I don't believe the Vale council have fully considered the benefits of dimming."

Mr Nicholas said that Cardiff council's decision to dim rather than switch off the lights was taken after extensive research and risk assessment.

The Vale council claim to have followed this same procedure but Mr Nicholas has his doubts about how rigorous it was.

A freedom of information request revealed that the council considered eight options ranging from no change to permanently switching lights off.

The implementation costs, energy and CO2 savings and payback periods were estimated for each option.

The cost to implement of the Vale's plan is said to be around £350,000 and the pay back period is estimated at just under one year.

Mr Nicholas said that data appears to have been drawn from different database sources rather than from one single matrix and that this fact makes it unreliable.

He also highlighted the usefulness of lanterns which he says have been ignored by some local authorities.

"Overall I think this has been a knee-jerk reaction by the Vale of Glamorgan council because they are under so much pressure for a number of reasons."