An IT support worker came up with a few lines of simple code to help his own work which has now been turned into a system-wide scheme that is set to save one local council thousands of pounds a year.

Peter Kear, an IT team leader for Staffordshire County Council, wrote the code around utilities included in Microsoft operating systems in order to shut computer terminals down as part of his patch management work.

Canny Kear then quickly realised that the new code could be used to scan all of the council's 7,500 computers so that, rather than merely being left in hibernation mode, they could be completely turned off at 8pm at night.

The system has been specially adapted to leave alone those computers that need to remain on through the night, while an option to cancel the operation pops up ten minutes before any other computer is due to close, protecting the work of any council staff who may be working late.

"We already have software that scans every county council computer when they are switched off to ensure they have the latest anti-virus protection installed," Kear told Kablenet.com

"This technology already realises whether a PC is on or off, so it was then a matter of writing a program that went a step further and switched off machines that didn't need to be on during the night."

Rollout of the new scheme has already started and, when fully operational, it is expected to save the council around £40,000 annually in electricity costs.

A recent Connect survey found that the two major concerns about outsourcing services like IT support were 'loss of control' (56 per cent) and 'budget over-runs' (43 per cent)