Home   Spalding   News   Article

Subscribe Now

Plans to make Spalding’s ‘woeful’ Christmas display bigger and better underway.




Bold plans to make a town centre’s Christmas celebrations bigger, brighter and better are already underway.

Your tree and decorations may only have been put back in the loft, but discussions about expanding this December’s festive celebrations in Spalding have already begun.

At last recent Spalding Town Forum meeting, Coun Gary Taylor spoke of his desire to illuminate the riverside and entrances to Spalding as well as the town centre going forward while Coun James Le Sage stated it was time to improve the area’s ‘woeful’ display.

Coun Gary Taylor
Coun Gary Taylor

“It’s important to celebrate Christmas in Spalding. We need to push to make Spalding a destination for Christmas, particularly when it’s the switch-on and the market event,” he said.

“We know there are pots of money available from UKSPF (the UK Shared Prosperity Fund) we may be able to bid for, so we might need to explore those opportunities as well as working with traders.

“We do need to make it work as there seems to be an appetite for doing that. I’m happy to investigate what we can do.

Coun Rob Gibson
Coun Rob Gibson

“Hopefully reductions in energy (cost) later in the year will give us more financial spend on actual improvements to events, lights and decorations - also the entrance into Spalding, not just the town centre but main roads, the riverside. There’s so many options to explore.”

Forum chairman Coun Rob Gibson told the forum he would also look at ways to fund new lights for this year’s display.

“There was a comment before this Christmas that the lights had seen their best and might need to be replaced,” he said.

Coun James Le Sage
Coun James Le Sage

“I believe they were used, or the majority were.

“I think other pots of money might be looked at for trying to replace them.”

The forum also discussed plans to illuminate The Crescent, where businesses such as Bookmark and The Candy Bar trade.

Coun James Le Sage added he would love to see Christmas trees return to town centre buildings.

“I remember years ago there were brackets put up by businesses in the town centre, some brackets are still there, that had trees planted in there,” he said.

“I remember as young child having rows of trees lit up in town centre, the fantastic display looked amazing although relatively small in nature.

More stories like this delivered straight to your inbox every morning - sign up to The Briefing here.

“I do think the decorations in the town have been quite woeful for some time and it is high time this forum looked at ways of potentially funding a better display.

“I think there’s quite a bit of evidence there that if you put on a big display people come and look at it. That can only be good for shops and the town centre.”

What do you think? Tell us in the comments below...



Comments | 0
This site uses cookies. By continuing to browse the site you are agreeing to our use of cookies - Learn More