SMART technology has been keeping people in Ludlow in the dark.

There have been complaints that street lighting in the town has been going off up to 90 minutes before it should do.

An investigation by Andy Boddington, who represents Ludlow on Shropshire Council, has discovered that the problem is caused by ‘smart’ technology that is in fact proving to be pretty dump.

The problem linked to the length of the day and the changing of the clocks from British Summer Time to Greenwich Mean Time. All of this has caused the technology to go into a tail spin.

But the consequence is that people have found themselves returning home from work or an evening out in the dark and therefore more vulnerable.

“People have been contacting me to express their annoyance that street lights are currently turning off between 10.30pm and 11pm,” said Andy Boddington.

"That’s an hour earlier than the 12pm shutdown set out in Shropshire Council’s policies.”

He has asked for a received an explanation from Shropshire Council’s lighting champion Jason Hughes for an explanation.

“It turns out its all down to technology – pretty dumb technology as it happens,” added Andy Boddington.

But the council is looking at new tools to improve the way the lights operate. This new technology will allow managers in Shirehall to control lights and identify faults centrally.

The explanation as to why lights have been going off as early as 10.30pm is that when the lighting is first converted to part-night lighting, the photo-cell (PEC) will turn the light on at dusk and operate through until approximately midnight when it will then switch off until approximately 5.30 am at which time it will reignite and operate through until dawn.

But these timings are approximate due to the way the PEC operates. PECs do not have an internal clock, nor are they able to pick up details of the astronomic clock at Rugby. Instead they use algorithms to determine the time by looking at the length of day between dusk and dawn to establish when midday occurs.

The PEC will then be able to calculate the length of time needed to pass from midday before it needs to switch off. Equally it knows that 5.5 hours later it needs to switch back on.

As this calculation is made daily it can be affected by extremes of weather conditions, for example if the skies are overcast at dawn but clear at dusk, or vice versa.

But the real problem is that the clocks do not recognise that twice a year at the end of March and the end of October we change our times by an hour.

However, there is hope for the future as a scheme is being trialed in which the clocks will be controlled centrally by someone with something as old fashioned as a watch who hopefully knows when the clocks change.

An added bonus is that the new system will be able to monitor each street lamp and automatically report if there are any faults.