EVERY year, millions of families across the UK are robbed of one of the most precious things they have, time.

At 1am on Sunday morning the clocks will spring forwards one hour, taking us into British Summer Time.

While this is welcome for many people, who will enjoy the brighter mornings and evenings, it has been known to cause a few headaches as we try and catch up.

However, spare a thought for the men and women tasked with keeping and maintaining the running of our civic clocks.

Sitting more than 200 feet above the ground on top of the Grade II listed Barrow Town Hall is a four-faced clock.

Each year, a borough council employee scales the clock tower to manually wind the the clock forwards.

Mike Otto, car parking and administration manager at the council said: "There is a person every year who goes up and knocks out a brass lug with a hammer and winds the clock forwards an hour. They then press the lug back in, and adjust the chimes so they match the hour."

This year, the council have gotten a jump on the official start of British Summer Time, and wound the clock forwards on Friday afternoon.

Mr Otto said ordinarily the changes would be made closer to Sunday, however, because of staff holidays, it was done sooner rather than later.

In Millom, it will be much more modern affair. After the clock was refurbished last year, the mechanisms inside were also brought up to date.

Millom town councillor Ged McGrath said: "It's a radio-controlled clock - it's all digital - we'll have no worries whatsoever as the clock will reset itself."

At 1am on Sunday morning, the clock inside the 137-year-old structure will slowly move forwards, readjusting itself to the new time.

The reason why we move our clocks forwards and backwards each year goes back more than 100 years.

In 1907 William Willett proposed the idea of British Summer Time, or daylight saving, as a response to the wasted hours of morning sunlight during the summer.

Until his death in 1915, he campaigned for the clocks to be moved forwards.

However, it was only because of the First World War changes took place. In May 1916 the Summer Time Act was passed to bring Greenwich Mean Time forwards by one hour.

Advocates of the change said millions of tonnes of coal used for lighting could be saved because of the extended daytime.

Since then, the system has stayed in place, with the routine of going forwards in March and back in October in place since 1972.

The last debate over the permanent introduction of daylight saving was in 2011, but the proposal never made it through parliament.

This year, the clocks will go forwards one hour at 1am on Sunday.