Dark Skies

Why are dark skies important?

We all live under the night sky. We should all be able to see the stars on a clear night, just as our ancestors did and future generations should.

But the stars above the Cotswolds aren’t as visible as they could be. Light pollution obscures the stars in the night sky, disrupts our natural sleep patterns, disrupts natural wildlife patterns, and contributes to carbon emissions.

The more we can do to reduce light pollution, the more we’ll be working towards net zero, improving our own wellbeing, and helping wildlife restore natural balance and lifecycles. We’d like to give more people in the Cotswolds the chance to enjoy a spectacular, starry night skies, and for them to be secure in the knowledge that if they can see the stars – nature will be benefitting from restored darkness levels too.

Advice and guidance

We have worked with Darkscape Consulting to produce a Technical Lighting Design Guide. We hope this will be used in the Cotswolds by local authorities, parish and town councils, homeowners, landowners, and business owners. The guidance pack will help advise on how we can all work to reduce light pollution, through a variety of methods. The Design Guide will be available on this page soon.

This work was made possible by funding from National Highways Designated Funds.

The Guidance Pack details the principles of good night time lighting, and the reasons behind them. It illustrates examples of good and bad practice in different contexts, with technical details to help make the implementation of best practice easier. The guidance considers a wide range of instances where lighting is used, including among others, domestic, hospitality, retail, industrial and commercial settings. The Guidance Pack includes lots of resources for more information, and useful checklists to help improve existing or new lighting schemes. It also helps to identify the circumstances in which a lighting designer may help.

On the ground improvements

In 2023-24, National Highways funded us to produce a Feasibility Phase 2 report on dark skies, which detailed the levels of light pollution near to their A417 Strategic Road Network in the Cotswolds.

Now, thanks to the further funding, we have worked with three businesses to measurably reduce light pollution by delivering a programme of retrofitting on their premises. The improvements are also in line with recommendations from CPRE, the countryside charity, who have been campaigning for darker skies and dark skies protection for many years.

The works undertaken and the impacts are described in the Dark Skies case study below.