8:40am Wednesday 1st September 2010
Billericay’S Christmas lights will be less impressive this year after the town council was told it cannot hang festive decorations on many of the town centre lamp posts.
The news comes after a survey of 30 lamp posts in the town found six were unsafe and needed to be taken down, and a further eight were not structurally sound enough to hold decorations.
Basildon Council, which owns four of the unsafe lamp posts, has taken them down, but has promised to replace them in the next few weeks.
The other two unsafe posts have already been replaced by Essex County Council. If the work is done in time for Christmas, Billericay Town Council, which makes a big community feature of the lights switch-on, will hang decorations on all but eight lamp posts.
If the columns are still absent, then the decorations will be reduced to hanging on 18 lights.
John Buchanan, from the town council, said: “Normally we like to put lights on all the lamp posts and it looks spectacular. It will be a real shame if we’re reduced to only 18 columns with big gaps in the High Street.”
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