A new contractor will be responsible for Stone’s Christmas lights this year after a number of problems with last year’s displays.
Stone Town Council has secured the services of Christmas Plus to provide lighting over the festive period this year. The company has previously worked with the council, but lost out when the contract was re-tendered in 2014. The town council says it has taken action to avoid a repeat of last year’s problems with the Christmas lights by reappointing a contractor it says has provided a high quality, reliable service in the past.
Tourism and town promotion sub-committee chairman Cllr Jill Hood said: “The Council were very disappointed with the quality of the lights provided last year and needed to address the situation. The re-appointment of Christmas Plus means that we are able to look forward again to the high quality displays that the town has come to expect.”
In January this year, the town council’s general purposes committee discussed a number of issues with the 2014 festive season lights. Cllrs Jill Hood, Mark Green and Ron Kenney submitted this list of problems to that meeting:
- The plane tree lights were working on one side only
- The lights over the High Street had only half a crossover of lights and did not reach fully across
- There were only two trees wrapped in the High Street
- Walton shops display was abysmal with what looked like ordinary light bulbs added at the last minute
- The Walton tree had its trunk wrapped but only a small area of each branch as the lights only went a little way across
- The Walton roundabout Christmas tree lights did not stretch to the end of its branches
- A number of areas had lights missing, specifically the Crown Hotel/The electricians shop. Lights were on and off at random with obvious timing problems
- We would like to ask the reason why the lights display was so poor on the night of the Christmas Switch On when problems should have been sorted out by that night?
- Where is the ‘Welcome to Stone’ strip? Even though lights have been added at a later date they are very small, poor quality and in all a very poor show
1 comment
Chelsea Hyland
Very pleased to hear Christmas Plus will be back on the job the 2014 display was very disappointing indeed. It is the Christmas Season for goodness sake, the time of year where magic happens, people are merry, faces are lit up with joy and happiness is all around. Last year was a terrible year for Stone and Just didn’t seem to get any better. This year we want BIG, BRIGHT BOLD! and I also would love to see a large Christmas Tree in the High Street square, the same as Stafford has. It’s time for some MAJOR improvement to be made, not just to the high street all year round but ESPECIALLY at Christmas.