FESTIVE decorations could cause some street lights to collapse and fall on people, a shock report has revealed.

Lancashire County Council may ban decorations, including festive lights, from being strung between many street lights as a result.

And that could affect plans to mark both Christmas 1999 and the millennium in East Lancashire.

Budget problems have once again this year meant the council has not been able to spend as much on repairing street lights as highways chiefs would like.

Many columns have now reached the stage where they may not be able to take the strain of having festive lights and other decorations strung from them at Christmas and other times of celebration.

Councillors are considering banning the use of such decorations and also using the electricity supplies to the lamps as a source for festive street lights.

A report drawn up by highways chiefs has recommended that licences due to be renewed in April 1999 for the use of street lights in putting up festive decorations should be allowed to expire.

The report added: "The fixing of decorations on to lighting columns places further additional loading to which they were not designed to accommodate and could increase the chances of a column collapsing with potentially fatal results. "In addition to permitting wires to be fixed between street lighting columns which have a tendency to cause columns to bow, the fixing of decorations to columns may necessitate them being drilled in order to feed the electrical cable to the display.

"This practice causes the corrosion protection system of the column to be compromised and potentially adds to problems in future years."

A final decision was deferred to the general purposes sub-committee.

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