New lighting which is causing a 'glare' in Tenby's harbour area is to be looked into to see if it can be modified to cause less light pollution.

An illuminating debate on the issue was sparked off at Tuesday night's meeting of Tenby Town Council by correspondence from Tenby Civic Society's chairman, Harry Gardiner, and local resident, Dr. Susan Biggin, who both asked for the situation to be addressed.

In a letter to the council, Dr. Biggin wrote that she had recently returned from holiday, and on her first evening back, immediately noticed a glare form the harbour area.

"I initially thought that temporary lighting had been brought in to illuminate a work area, but later realised that a number of white spotlights had been installed permanently, attached to the lamp posts of the original soft orange lighting," she pointed out.

Also raising concern about the new lighting, Mr. Gardiner wrote: "The prominent picturesque areas of Tenby need to be attractively lit and presented at night, so they look as attractive at night as during the day.

"New lights creating glare do not achieve this. The new harbour lights need better direction and shielding to avoid glare, but still light up the operational areas of the harbour.

"A policy or approach is needed so all new or replacement lighting in the prominent, well-known and attractive areas of Tenby are designed to present those areas at night as attractive townscape, to enhance those areas from their viewing surroundings.

"Other seaside towns make a feature of well designed, efficient, well targeted lighting that avoids glare and light pollution," explained Mr. Gardiner.

Responding to the concerns, Clr. Trevor Hallett said that he understood the need for illumination in the harbour for security reasons, but agreed that all lighting in that area needed to be more sensitive.

"The tweaking of these lights will benefit everyone and cause less of a glare and make it more ambient," he said.

Clr. Will Rossiter said that perhaps the lights could relocated to the Sailing Club side, so that there would be a little less light pollution and not so much glare heading towards Crackwell Street.

Clr. Mrs. Caroline Thomas said that it was down to the town council now to investigate who installed the lights and to find out if they could be modified to be less obtrusive.