The sun will soon be setting on your chance to say how Kent’s streets should be lit at night.

Kent County Council’s latest public consultation process, in which residents are being asked to choose between all-night lighting or part-night lighting in an online questionnaire, ends on Sunday.

All-night lighting means street lampposts across the county stay switched on in the hours of darkness, while part-night lighting means they are turned off between midnight and 5am.

The latter was introduced across Kent as part of KCC’s Safe and Sensible initiative designed to cut costs as well as carbon emissions. It affected about 70,000 of the authority’s 118,000 lighting stock.

However, having plunged many residential areas into darkness overnight, the scheme has attracted widespread criticism from those concerned about safety and crime.

The Messenger also revealed last year that, although the police were consulted about the switch-off, they stated they could not support it.

The 10-week consultation period has also included media advertising, promotion via electronic roadside messages and bus signs, distribution of 16,000 promotional postcards across Kent, plus awareness raising on its various social media platforms.

Hard copies of the survey have also been distributed to libraries and gateway centres, although none were available in Gravesend Library or at the Civic Centre when the Messenger inquired last week.

KCC’s first public consultation, held in 2013, was later criticised in a report as being tarnished and lacking transparency, with a “tick-box feel”. Of the county’s 1.5 million residents, only 546 responded.

This latest one came in the wake of council bosses announcing all-night lighting would return, although “dimmed a little”, with the installation of cost-effective and environmentally-friendly light-emitting diodes (LEDs).

However, campaigners for dimmed all-night lighting were furious this has not been included in the survey, despite KCC stating in the summer that it would be.

The questionnaire does ask for people’s views on whether it is “a good idea” to dim street lights when the roads and footways are less busy but does not explain the cost or reiterate its own announcement in January that LED lighting would reduce its energy bill by 60%.

The cost-effectiveness of part-night lighting is highlighted in the fact it saves the authority some £400,000 more each year than all-night lighting.

The survey also states that if the latter is the preferred option, it would need to look “at how this £400,000 would be funded and consider its impact on other services”.

Gravesham campaigner Tina Brooker has urged as many concerned residents to take part as possible after KCC refused to include the 11,065 petition signatures she collected calling for all-night street lighting.

The legal secretary, who lives in The Warren, Gravesend, branded the decision as undemocratic.

She added: “Residents have already spoken very loudly and clearly and signed a petition in good faith. It is therefore paramount that as many people as possible participate before the deadline.”

To take part in the consultation, go to www.kent.gov.uk/streetlights or phone 03000 414141.