When do the clocks go forward and why?

Don’t forget to set your clocks forward by one hour on Sunday 27th March 2011. Officially, British Summer Time begins and I guess it is official spring.

OK, so we lose a hour but we will get a extra hour of sunlight in the evening and hopefully a long hot summer ahead so there's plenty to look forward to after the biannual changing of the clocks.

“Spring forward, fall back”, just in case you are not sure which way to turn the dial on your clock.

Oh and just for information the clocks go back on October 30th this year, but that's a long way off and we still have lots of summer fun in Huntingdon before then.

We've been changing our clocks forwards and backwards in the UK since 1916. It's all to do with saving the hours of daylight.

William Willett proposed the idea of British Summer Time in 1907 in the UK in a pamphlet entitled 'The Waste of Daylight'. However the idea was first proposed by George Hudson in New Zealand in 1896. Both had noticed that the summer mornings light was wasted while people slept, and that the time would be better utilised in the afternoon by putting the clocks forward. After campaigning for years the British Government finally adopted the system a year after Willett's death.

Photo: earls37a