A DROITWICH resident claims he has found the town's missing Christmas lights in a council depot.

And he is set to reveal their whereabouts tonight.

The town council said last month they were searching for the lights that adorned the tree in Victoria Square and mysteriously vanished shortly after last Christmas.

But Mark Heel, of Burrish Street, in Droitwich town centre, now says, after some investigation and asking a council contractor, he has found them.

Mr Heel said he wants to unveil their whereabouts at tonight's town council meeting "so the councillors have egg on their faces".

"They will be extremely embarrassed. I wasn't surprised the council didn't find them," he said.

Members of the town council and the Droitwich Association for Retail, Tourism and Services had called on the public to help them solve the mystery of where the lights were.

Terry Spencer, town councillor and long-serving member of DARTS said the lights had been put up by the association last Christmas.

Disappeared

"After Christmas they were not taken down and they stayed on the tree for some time because people were saying how nice they looked," he said.

"But before long, it was noticed that they'd disappeared, so we called on people to see whether they knew where they were."

Mr Spencer said it was now too late to put the lights up because the town's switch-on was on Friday, December 3.

"We thought they would be somewhere like that and we suspected all along they had been taken down by the Highways department.

"It's actually not the council's fault, so it's not a case of us having egg on our faces.

"It's just a shame we weren't told before now where they were so we could have put them up in time for Christmas."