Wiltshire County Council wants to turn off street lights and cut back on gritting icy minor roads to save money.

These are the tough choices it has had to make after the Government's below national average grant award for the county next year.

We accept belts have to be tightened but this cannot be allowed to happen in areas where people's safety is put at risk.

Temperatures are predicted to sink to -5 degrees Centigrade tonight and by tomorrow dozens of back roads will become a lottery for drivers and there is still three months of poor weather to come.

How many accidents will it take, like the crash on the icy A420 near Ford last weekend that left a couple trapped upside down in a ditch, before the council sees the folly in such penny-pinching?

The proposal to turn off streetlights in some villages and on housing estates is an open invitation to criminals and yet another threat to people's safety.

The council must urgently rethink this proposal before it is too late.