A COUNCIL is to switch back on street lights at six locations around the county - but 38 areas will remain unlit after a trial saved £250,000.

Buckinghamshire County Council pulled the plug on street lighting in 46 locations during a three year trial to save money and slash carbon emissions.

Just six sites from 38 will be re-illuminated due to safety concerns, including the A40 at Studley Green and the A413 between the Kingsway roundabout and the Railway Viaduct.

The trial was suspended and the lights switched back on at the A40 in Denham after the bridge was removed following an accident.

The other three sites are in the north of the county, while the statistics are still being evaluated on the other eight locations.

The council said the scheme will save £430,000 over the next five years, as well as reduce CO2 emissions by 578 tonnes every year.

The authority is now launching a public consultation into the trial’s findings - from October 17 until December 11 - before deciding whether to push ahead.

BCC’s Cabinet member for Transportation Cllr Peter Hardy said: “We will be switching on 277 lights - 17 per cent of those lights - which will cost £29,000 in 2011/12.

“We’ve done a very full, well researched trial, we’ll present the evidence on the website and ask people to tell us if they come to a different conclusion.

“We respect that Studley Green residents want the lighting so we’ve listened, we are interested to know what the response from the public will be and we will take full account of it when it comes in.

“There is little logic why there were lights in many of these rural places in the first place.

"These are lights that should be switched off because they’re not necessary and have been costing the taxpayer the equivalent of £100,000 per year for some time - it’s a good success story.”

The scheme had been criticised in some quarters over road safety.

The Buckinghamshire Coroner Richard Hulett said the deaths of Margaret Beeson and Dr John Bendor-Samuel may have been avoided had street lighting been on.

But Cllr Hardy said the number of accidents on the unlit sections had in fact gone down during the trial and the coroner was satisfied by reports produced by the council.

He said: “Injury collisions have reduced during darkness from 74 to 55, there’s no evidence the trial has led to an increased casualty rate, in fact the reverse - that’s the good news.

“We’ve looked site by site at what we should do, we’ve looked at collision history, we’ve looked at community safety and we’ve looked at feedback.

“If there had been fatalities as a result of the lights being switched off - they would have been switched on straight away.

"We regret those 55 collisions but we don’t regard them as being down to the switch off."

To take part in the consultation, visit the BCC website from October 17.