Most of us know that the clocks go back an hour or forward an hour twice a year, but it’s hard to remember when and which way they’re going. Daylight savings is the system used in the UK, European Union countries, the United States, Canada, Australia and some other places to ensure we don’t waste daylight in the summer and save fuel in the winter.
Germany was the first country to adopt the system in 1907 and the UK followed shortly after.
We set the clocks forward by one hour in the spring and back an hour in the autumn.
The spring time is referred to as daylight saving time (DST) and autumn time is standard time.
Learn the mnemonic ‘spring forward, fall back’ to remember which way the clocks go at either end of the year.
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The whole purpose for daylight savings is to make use of daylight.
We follow a clock in order to get to work or school on time and if we didn’t move the clocks forward in the Spring, it would be much darker earlier on in the evening.
In the winter, putting the clocks back means we get up an hour earlier so we get more light in a day.
However, people argue that the policy isn’t very practical because it means we have to travel home from work or school in the dark.
When will the nights get lighter?
The days start to get longer (it gets darker later in the evening) every day from the winter solstice until the summer solstice.
The winter solstice was on December 21, 2021, so we’ll notice the days progressively getting a bit longer.
Right now the sun sets at around 4.30pm, but by the end of January it will set at around 4.50pm.
On February 28 the sun starts to set at 5.30pm and we’ll add on an extra half an hour to the day by the time we get to March 15 (with the sun setting at six o’clock)
Thanks to daylight savings, sunset will take place at 7.30pm by the end of March.
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