Possible implications for Northern Ireland of the Daylight Saving Bill

Written evidence from the Institute of Directors Northern Ireland Division

The Institute of Directors Northern Ireland Division would add our concerns to those of Scotland in relation to the proposal to change daylight savings time by advancing time by one hour for all or part of the year.

The Private Members Bill appears to discount the impact that the proposed changes would have on northern parts of the UK including Northern Ireland, particularly the implications for road safety, energy consumption, rural dwellers and tourism along with the usual difficulties of commuting to work or school in the hours of darkness. The recent severe winter weather highlighted the difficulties for anyone travelling before sunrise and therefore before icy roads have had the chance to thaw.

Northern Ireland (at mid Ulster) is over 6½ degrees west of London and over 3 degrees north. Both of these variations work against us when we look at applying daylight saving in the winter. As the province is further north than London, our days are already shorter in winter. This means sunrise is very late in the winter, whereas London suffers a lot less from the time shift.

As the table below shows, on 1 January, for example, London’s day is nearly 8 hours long whereas ours is 7 hours 20 minutes. Sunrise for London at that time of year is just after 8am and would move to shortly after 9am, while for Northern Ireland sunrise would move to a quarter to ten.

At the other end of the day, in London the actual time for sunset is only about 10 minutes later than Northern Ireland in mid winter. By mid March, of course, it evens out.

In summary, for much of the winter sunrise for Northern Ireland would be after 9.15am, and as late as 9.45am for several weeks, with a shorter day than London and no real advantage over London at the end of the day due to our shorter days in winter.

For anyone who has an early start to work or school, this would mean leaving home in the dark with sunrise after 8am between last week in October and the first week of March, ie over 4 months - compared to the current position where it is late November till early February or just over 2 months for the same situation.

We have taken mid-Ulster as a reference point; obviously the further north and west you go the worse the situation is. For example, on 1 January Derry would see sunrise at 9.53am with sunset at 5.10pm giving a day of only 6 hours 52 minutes.

A PSI report on the impact of changing the daylight hours during winter suggests that anyone working 9 to 5 hours would benefit from the extra daylight for leisure purposes at the end of the day, thus improving the health of the population. However this table shows that, in fact, such commuters would still be travelling home in the dark having also travelled to work in the dark.

In the mornings, even more commuters would be travelling (and often driving or crossing roads) in the dark at the busiest time for both workers and schoolchildren than is currently the case.

Northern Ireland’s schoolchildren still participate to a great extent in organised competitive games. Under the new times, on Saturday mornings, schoolchildren would be travelling to sporting fixtures in darkness and indeed the start time of such fixtures might have to be moved to a later time taking up more of the family’s weekend together time.

The suggestion that an extra hour of daylight between 4pm and 5pm is likely to affect the instances of crime seems rather spurious.

While the proposals would create useful extra lighter evenings at other times of the year, during winter the extra useful light hours at the weekends are outweighed by the extra days of dark mornings during the working/school week.

We would point out that unless the Republic of Ireland also adopts the daylight saving proposal we would have the nonsensical situation of having two time zones operating in the British Isles.

We would urge the abandonment of this Private Members Bill.

24 March 2011