Welshpool Town Council are now in a race against time to have the town’s Christmas lights infrastructure fixed by the winter.

Since an inspection in February 2024 deemed Welshpool’s Christmas lights infrastructure to be “lethal”, the council have been looking to carry out repairs to the system that will allow it to switch on the lights come Christmas 2024.

The council’s operations manager Paul McGrath told members at the council’s property and services committee meeting on May 15 that a potential contractor had been found to repair the infrastructure in September.

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Mr McGrath also told the council that it could cost up to £9,000 to repair the system, less than the original estimate of up to £13,000.

Cllr Nick Howells added: “I know this contractor personally and can vouch that he’s done a lot of good work. He’s practically re-wired half of Powis Castle.”

"He sorted out all the Cat 1s and Cat 2s that needed to be done when it came time for an inspection.

“He sorted out all the secondary circuits, standard mains socket and plug-in loads when it came time for them to be brought up to code for an inspection.”

Mr McGrath added that the contractor has requested to meet with the company that put up the lights and will likely need a street work licence and other forms of permission to quickly fix the issue.

He added: “We are under a bit of pressure to get this done on time.”

While the lights themselves, newly purchased by the council in 2023, are all in working order, the connections, wiring and power supply within the town's buildings that supports them were deemed to be unfit for use by an inspector in just 20 minutes.

Issues included several missing RCD breakers, connections that are not fit for purpose, some power sockets held together with duct tape and others not mounted properly.

Mr McGrath said in February: “If this work is not updated there will be no lights this year. Basically, we have new lights but now have no infrastructure to power them.”