Hopes have been shared that the upgrade work in St Neots Market Square could speed up and be completed by Christmas.

The Huntingdonshire District Council project to refurbish the town centre is due to finish in January 2025, but Councillor Sam Wakeford, executive councillor for jobs, economy and housing, said he would like to “beat Christmas”.

The authority has said its work on the Market Square will see it “opened into an attractive and versatile public realm space”.

To do this the district council said it would relocate the car parking and introduce new seating areas, as well as ‘enhancing’ the facilities for the market and other events in the town.

Work on the project began in January and is due to take until next year to complete.

However, at an overview and scrutiny panel (performance and growth) meeting this week (April 3), Cllr Wakeford said the district council was doing what it can to finish sooner.

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He said: “The focus is on pace to help businesses that are in the square as much as possible when the weather gets warmer, when some of them need to use elements of the square to support their business and ideally as well to try to beat Christmas.

“As members will recall the project is planning on the works taking a full year, taking us into January of next year, but we are doing our darndest to enable finishing sooner rather than later.

“Of course we were able to allow the Christmas lights switch on in the Market Square last Christmas, it would be a wonderful bonus if we could do that again this year, but as I have said previously, that is not a promise, but it is certainly an ambition to keep us motivated.”

A report presented to the meeting said there had been no delays to the project so far, but said the authority was anticipating “inevitable issues to arise”.

However, Cllr Wakeford said they were hoping to address any problems when they came up and said some issues had already been preempted.