Current Initiatives

Improved guidance

Members of the UKDSP are in constant conversation about the best guidance towards good lighting practice for both individuals and organisations.

The basics are:

• Aim light Only where needed and never above the horizontal
• Use sensors to ensure lights are only on when needed
• Minimise the number and brightness of lights
• Avoid lights of a colour temperature above 3000K

The UKDSP has released a document ‘Towards A Dark Sky Standard’. This is the product of our partnerships technical groups conversations with lighting professionals to provide a resource that encourage good lighting decision making before the installation or planning process.

Towards Legislation

Poor-quality lighting has been proliferating in the United Kingdom for many decades now. Efforts so far to reverse its negative effects by environmentalists, dark-sky campaigners and a growing body of lighting professionals have led to damage limitation rather than solutions. Light pollution is a causal factor in both the current climate emergency and world biodiversity collapse. France, Mexico, South Korea and other countries and regions have enacted legislation to curb the misuse of light. The UKDSP believes that the UK government should urgently follow their example. When choosing whether to light or which light to use, the scientific Precautionary Principle should be applied, especially in the case of blue-rich LED lighting: if it’s possible that there’s something wrong with it, don’t proceed until the negative aspect is corrected.