DEAR editor,

Brian Jones has asked my view on the fact that some street lights in Penarth are being switched off at particular times, and I'm happy to respond.

In general good street lighting improves both personal safety and road safety and helps to reduce crime, but any local authority has to make terribly difficult decisions because the money available to public services has been cut year on year by the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

I don't know any local councillor who stood for election in order to make public services worse and all of us are trying hard to do more with less and to keep the public safe. Cutting some street lighting – done sensibly and at times when the impact is least – is inevitable in the present circumstances.

I have looked at the decisions of the Vale of Glamorgan Council and they appear to have a cohesive street lighting strategy, which delivers significant early savings, with the aim of moving to full LED street lighting over time. I am told that over a third of the Vale of Glamorgan's street lights are already LED and that the part-night lighting arrangements only affect approximately 60 per cent of the remaining conventional street lighting stock, saving in the region of £300k per annum on energy costs alone.

Decisions as to which lights to change to part-night were made in consultation with local police representatives, and I know that the council and police officers will continue to carefully monitor the impacts of the changes to establish if there has been any increases in crime or safety that could be attributed to the lighting reduction. However, there is no such evidence at this moment in time.

I am aware that the council is shortly to consider a report aimed at increasing the number of residential LED lighting units even further and due to the relatively low energy costs of these units, there may be an opportunity for a number of the current part-night lighting areas to benefit from this type of LED lighting and return to the normal "dusk until dawn" operation. I look forward to reading this report in the near future.

I return to the difficult choices that have to be made, and frankly I would rather see some cuts in street lighting than have greater cuts in the youth service or leisure services or sport or music – because those cuts would also affect public safety as well as quality of life. I'd rather see modest reductions in street lighting than see greater cuts in care for the elderly or in library services – and that's the choice that has to be made.

I want councils to aspire to greater success for our people in education and in creating jobs and businesses – and they have to spend money on those services too. I want our council to spend money on child care – just read the evidence from Public Health Wales on the damage done if we fail children in the first 1,000 days of life.

Local authority decisions do affect community safety, and that's why the chief constable joins me to meet the leader and chief executive of each of our seven local authorities in South Wales separately each quarter to share local problems and seek solutions. At those meetings we do discuss the challenges and dilemmas that we face during this period of unprecedented "austerity" in order to work together as we "do more with less".

We still have to make our own decisions but the important point is that I know that the Vale of Glamorgan councillors, in taking their decisions, are balancing all the priorities that the public want them to address and doing their best in all circumstances to keep the public safe.

Alun Michael,

Police and Crime Commissioner for South Wales