MORE than 11,000 street lights have been switched off at night across Worcestershire - saving taxpayers a £150,000 bill.

Some 14 months on from Worcestershire County Council launching the scheme to plunge some areas into darkness between midnight and 6am, a staggering £2,900 is being clawed back every week in energy costs.

Your Worcester News can today reveal how the project has led to 400 members of the public contacting County Hall since it kicked off, with many asking for lights to come back on.

Council chiefs have taken the step of insisting there is "no hard evidence" crime has gone up in any of the areas implicated so far, and say they believe the majority of householders back the move.

A new report on the progress made since April last year reveals how council staff have been in "ongoing talks with policing teams" about the impact of the switch-offs.

The end target of switching off 17,000, with Worcester being tackled over the rest of the summer, is on track to meet its target of April 2016.

Mark Holston, from the county council's street lighting team, said: "We are well over halfway with it now and the savings in energy costs are around £150,000.

"The local policing teams have been informing us about any issues but currently there has been nothing which is solely attributable to the night-time switch offs."

Speaking during a meeting of the economy and environment scrutiny panel, he did state some members of the public have rang up "in surprise" at the lights going off but said most householders have not noticed.

"We're still getting comments from people in areas that were done six months ago, where they didn't realise it had happened but were up one night at 1am in the morning," he said.

"We have had people report crimes that have occurred to us, believing it was due to the part-night switch-off, but we've taken them up with policing teams who don't think that's the case.

"It's very early days to see any trends though."

During the debate Councillor Pat Agar said: "I'm delighted this project is going ahead, this seems a little bit 'after its tine' to be frank, we were a bit late in doing this."

Councillor John Smith, the cabinet member for highways, said on all new housing estates contractors must now install LED lighting, which use much less energy.

"That is now a requirement of all contractors," he said.

"This switch-off scheme has gone fairly successfully, obviously we've had complaints but I believe a large majority of the public support what we're doing."

So far Droitwich, Bromsgrove, Bewdley, Redditch and Kidderminster have been done and Worcester, Malvern and parts of the Wychavon district are next.

Main roads are being kept as they are, with the night time switch-offs in residential areas only.

The policy has led to some clashes between councillors though, with the likes of Councillor Fran Oborski saying some people are "appalled" by it.

There are 52,000 street lights across Worcestershire in total, meaning one in three are subject to night time switch-offs.