There will be some extra special sparkle in Tenby this coming festive season after members of the town council gave the green light to the replacement of the resort’s Christmas lighting displays this week.

The town’s Christmas lights were originally purchased by the Chamber of Trade and Tourism’s ‘Buy a Bulb’ initiative and handed over to the town council in the late 1990s

Over the years the council have replaced most of those initial lights due to wear and tear and have converted them to LED to reduce energy consumption and improve their carbon footprint.

However, exceptionally stormy conditions over recent years have taken considerable toll on the lights, with the repairs and renewals budget increasing year on year.

This week the town council agreed, instead of continuing to continuing to make piecemeal repairs to the existing lights, to commission a totally new scheme for the town.

The bespoke scheme has been designed to cope with more extreme conditions experienced in coastal towns and will see new festoon lighting throughout the town, along with new crossroad displays in Tudor Square.

The council have also agreed to look at the possibilities of using the existing lights that are still operational to extend the town lighting to areas outside of the town walls.

The project also includes a completely new set of lights for the town Christmas tree which overlooks Tudor Square from the grounds of St Mary’s Church.

Part funding for these lights has been generously provided by Emily Ruff, who raised £630 for the project through a raffle during a Christmas Market she held at the De Valence last year.

“Over the years our contractors have been brilliant in massaging the lights along, but the adverse weather is really taking its toll,” explained the Mayor Clr. Tony Brown.

“We’re finding that, year on year, we’ve have to decommission some of the displays because they can’t be repaired and failures of some of the strings after they have been put up are becoming more common which is very time consuming for our contractors,” he continued.

“Everyone will also have noticed that some of the picture displays look a bit sorry for themselves as some of the lights have gone out of them leaving Father Christmas without an arm and things like that!

“The Council had to take the decision to carry on down the road of an increasing cost in repairs while pushing the can of replacing the system down the road a few years or bite the bullet and do it now.

“With Emily coming forward with her generous contribution to the tree lights, members felt why not go the whole hog now.”

The Mayor added that this represented considerable financial investment by the town council.

”It must be remembered that town council funding only comes from the domestic council tax payers of the town and we would be delighted if local businesses and others would like to follow Emily’s lead and consider contributing to the scheme,” he said.