A petition is calling on Douglas Council to reinstate the festoon lighting along the promenades.

However, the council’s leader says it is too late as the new poles have been bought and are now being installed.

Adam Keay created the Facebook page Save Douglas’s Lights in an effort to make Douglas Council reverse its decision to replace the lights with, what he calls, the ’ugly and brash new LED lighting’.

He told the Manx Independent that the lights were ’iconic of the town and have been enjoyed by, and a source of inspiration to, generations of tourists to the island whose first impressions on arrival by sea has been the sight of the twinkling lights forming a beautiful necklace of light across the bay.’

He added: ’I have spoken to a number of Douglas’s hoteliers and shop owners many of whom were not aware that the corporation would not be putting the festoon fairy lights back up again after the regeneration works being conducted by the government are complete.

’Sadly, this issue has been overlooked until now. It seems that people didn’t take the corporation seriously back in February when the corporation made the appalling announcement that the festoon lights would be coming down. To most people it seems unthinkable that the corporation would vandalise Douglas in this way.’

Council leader David Christian told the Manx Independent that it is ’too late in the day the lights have all been purchased and currently being installed’.

He added: ’This has been in the public arena and reported in the media on a number of occasions, these columns are not suitable for festoon lighting, so we will not be revisiting the issue, when they are switched on as well as lighting the road the back light will light walkway and can change colour as can the spire on the top of each light.’

Mr Keay said: ’The removal of the festoon fairy lights is only the latest public facility or service to be shirked by the corporation in the name of cost cutting but no matter how many cost cuts that the corporation make, they want to go on cutting more and more and Victoria Ward and the island’s tourist industry have to pay the price or else government pick up the bill.

’The way the corporation is behaving is unacceptable. It is actively contributing to the decline of the town.’

The petition can be found by going to http://chng.it/yn2cdW8svh.