ESSEX County Council is set to push its controversial part-night lighting scheme back one hour six days a week.

It means instead of the majority of streets being plunged into darkness at midnight, from Monday to Saturday the lights will not go off until 1am.

There will be no change on Sunday nights.

The new times will begin on Monday.

Highways chief Rodney Bass announced the change at a meeting of the council cabinet this morning. 

He said the move is designed to help the night time economy in urban areas and benefit commuters.

Mr Bass said: "We have taken the decision to change the operating hours of part-night lighting because of the positive impact it will have for the night time economy in our main towns.

“It is important that we continue to fine tune [part-night lighting] based on feedback from urban areas like Epping Forest, where the hours of [part-night lighting] have already been successfully varied where there are underground stations operating after midnight.

“We are fortunate in Essex that because of our uniquely flexible and controllable lighting system, we are able to do this and so can respond to issues of public perception and concern."

The highways chief added he remains open to further "fine-tuning" of the system.

Since part-night lighting was introduced, the council has saved £1.4million.

The scheme was introduced incrementally across the county by the council in 2013 and 2014 after it spent up to £6million on a new central management system for its 127,0000 streetlights.

It means about seven in ten lights are off between midnight and 5am.

Busy road junctions and town and city centre streets were largely exempt.