PLANS to take £1 million from the council's highways budget and use it to install more than 4,000 LED streetlights have been put forward as an 'alternative budget' proposal.

Worcestershire County Council’s 2017 group, made up of Green and Lib Dem councillors, want to use £1 million from next year’s proposed highways budget to fund the installing of around 4,300 more LED streetlights.

Installing the new streetlights would save £50,000, the councillors said, and a further £100,000 the year after based on current tariffs and usage.

Green councillor Matthew Jenkins said: "We looked at the budget that came forward, which had lots of good stuff particularly money for adult social care which we really need, but we felt there was a big hole in terms of addressing climate change.

"There is a 2050 target for the council to become carbon neutral, I would have liked it to be 2030, and there wasn't much in the budget so we felt that was something we needed.

"Speeding up the LED replacement scheme is win-win because we will start saving money sooner and we are also doing something that is good for the environment and cutting down carbon emissions.

"If you speed that process up, we will then have all this extra money that we would be able to spend on other things."

The savings would then be used to fund work to ensure all the county council’s buildings, excluding schools, were carbon neutral.

The money would be used to audit every building under the council’s ownership which would then be used to draw up plans on how to become carbon neutral.

Further future savings, which would be expected to be around £100,000, would then be invested in the county's youth services, the budget amendment said.

The county council meets at 10am today (February 13) to decide on its budget.