March Christmas lights switch-on 2024 set to bust budget with fears it will be worse for December 2025

The cost of last year’s Christmas lights switch-on in March is heading towards a budget-busting cost of £25,000.

Members of March Town Council, which funds the event, heard invoices are still coming in for the event, but town clerk Sarah Lemmon is convinced her projections will be accurate.

As a result, the final cost will bust the budget of £20,000 and Ms Lemmon fears the costs could be higher still this December.

She said the two volunteer electricians who help with the lights have been booked on to complete two specific qualifications to enable them to continue to do the work, which is usually supervised by the infrastructure firm Balfour Beatty.

Ms Lemmon said if the volunteers do not complete the courses, then the council would be facing huge costs of paying a company to install the lights.

Cllr Jan French said: “We have been providing the lights for over 25 years and the people of March love it, but I am concerned that the cost could go up to over £30,000 – that’s an awful lot of money and I don’t think I can justify spending that.”

Ms Lemmon said the town had previously used a contractor to put the lights up in 2018 when it had cost around £16,800, however, the council had been caught out because the cost quoted was for only putting the lights up, not taking them down again.

She said the former town clerk had argued the case and the cost had been kept at £16,800, but Ms Lemmon pointed out that was seven years ago and costs have gone up a lot since then.

The council’s Christmas Lights Committee is looking into ways of cutting costs and councillors suggested that only having the lights without a switch-on event may be one way to save money.

The committee is also looking at fundraising to try to cover the extra costs. Cllr Field said: “The committee is taking it seriously, and we are looking at what we can do.”

Cllr Rob Skoulding suggested reducing the lights display to just Broad Street and Market Square, but was told the savings made by doing that would be minimal.

It was agreed to leave the matter with the Christmas Lights Committee to come up with a plan of action.