MALVERN Town Council is planning to cut spending on Christmas lights next year to help lower its tax demand.

Businesses will be asked to sponsor the lights and the town council will almost halve the amount of money it spends on them to £10,000.

If businesses are not prepared to help provide funding, the lights will be reduced and become concentrated in the centre of Malvern.

At a finance and administration committee meeting last Thursday, December 4, chairman, Coun Ralph Madden, said: "When I drive through Malvern and a third of the lights are not operating and shop owners are not investing in Christmas trees, I wonder why we bother."

Councillors voted to recommend that full council reduce the budget for the lights, and lower the precept by 7.5 per cent.

The precept is the amount of money the town council asks Malvern Hills District Council to include in council tax to fund its activities.

Funding the decrease will also mean charges for the allotments provided by the council will go up by five per cent. Burial charges for the cemetery will increase by 7.5 per cent.

Councillors have recommended that £705,425 be spent by the town council next year.

They said £39,000 of reserves should be released to enable the precept to be lowered to £716,000, compared to £796,000 for this year.

Yesterday (Thursday) Coun Madden said the precept could be reduced because the town council spent a lot of money on asset renewal, such as replacing things like litter bins and bus shelters, last year and had a lot of money in reserves.

"The council has a history of collecting the precept and not spending it," he said.

Major spending planned by the council next year includes £25,000 for improvements to Victoria Park, which will mainly be spent on refurbishing the toilets to make them less prone to vandalism.

Full council will discuss and vote on the budget for 2004/2005 at a meeting on Tuesday, December 16.