Fluorescent tubes fail to strike or take many attempts before striking (and then remain on perfectly)

Yes. They are rated by wattage.

Starters tend to be universal these days. cost 53p + vat at TLC, so that would be a cheap test,

For some reason cold makes them worse.

Or change the ballasts to electronic ones. But likely as expensive as changing to LED.

Swap the starters around to prove they are at fault?

Actually just removing them often fires the tube instantly (on a one shot basis) if the starter is faulty.

NY pretended :

Whilst it is struggling to stay on, try twisting the starter out. If it then remains lit, it usually means that fitting a new starter will fix the issue. You can buy universal starters, but sometimes a fitting can be fussy. If you buy a specific one, then it has to be the correct wattage.

Electronic starters

They don't like starting in cold weather. I worked in a huge unheated building where they were never turned off, because if they did they'd never re-light until the Summer!

Where I used to work, there was a server computer with that reputation: it was never powered down because it was a right pig to make it reboot. There was one guy who possessed the black art to get it going again. All went well until the day a JCB operator on a housing estate drove his back-hoe through an underground high voltage cable, not doing himself or the JCB much good, and plunging the whole town into a power cut. The sudden loss of power, not even a tidy shutdown, caused even Our Guru a challenge to get the server going again.

Cold weather affects the starting of tubes significantly. They usually stay on once their internal temperature reaches a sufficiently high level. Some tubes seem to be better than others and the older they are the worse they get. You should match starters to the tube wattages. You used to be able to get them so marked. If you want to find out if its the tube or the starter and there is more then one simply swap the starters. If the fault moves with the starter its a no brainer.

As for getting away from the standard tubes, well there are lots of options depending on how much work you want to get involved in. I'll leave this discussion to others. Its certainly not the length that is the issue, since I had a Woolworth double short fitting with two tubes that hated the cold.

Brian

Swap the starters and see if the fault moves. However some of the older fittings do not like so called universal starters.

Brian