HELENSBURGH'S Christmas lights will be switched on next week – but a favourite feature of the event over the last few years will be missing this time round.

The organisers of the display, the Helensburgh Festive Lighting Charitable Trust, have announced that due to rising insurance and policing costs there will be no parade from the Victoria Halls ahead of the switching-on ceremony in Colquhoun Square on Friday, November 24.

Instead the focus of the event will be entirely on Colquhoun Square itself, where entertainment will begin at 6pm before the big switch is thrown by a pupil at a local primary school.

The Trust's chairwoman, Vivien Dance, said: “This year we were going to be faced with costs of £1,000 more for the parade which we felt we could not afford.

“We raised the money last year from sponsorship, coffee mornings and the like, but we realised that raising those costs every year was getting more and more difficult.

“We decided that it was a good time for a change anyway after doing things the same way for the last six or seven years.

"We noticed last year that most people were gathering in the square for the main switch-on, rather than watching the parade elsewhere."

Despite the absence of a parade, the Trust is still promising a spectacular occasion in the square next Friday night, when Kayleigh Ballantyne, a pupil at Colgrain Primary School, will throw the big switch to turn on 160 light features on lamp-posts and decorated trees around the town centre.

Kayleigh won a competition to design a feature which will form part of the light display – though her winning design won't be revealed until the lights are illuminated.

Next Friday's entertainment starts at 6pm, when the HMS Neptune Volunteer Band – performing at the event for the first time – will take to the stage and play a selection of jolly Christmas tunes to get everyone in the mood before Kayleigh throws the switch to turn on the display, which will light up Helensburgh for six weeks over the festive season.

This year's Christmas lights display was partly funded by a grant of £20,000, approved by Argyll and Bute Council's Helensburgh and Lomond area committee in September subject to a number of conditions.

The council decided last year to pursue "transitional arrangements" aimed at transferring responsibility for festive lighting to community groups within three years.

Meanwhile, festive lighting in other communities around Helensburgh and Lomond will also be switched on next Friday – albeit with less ceremony than in Helensburgh.

Council employees will put up festive lighting on trees in Arrochar, Cardross, Garelochhead, Kilcreggan and Rhu which will then be set to light up when it gets dark on November 24.

The authority decorates permanent trees in Arrochar, Cardross and Kilcreggan, and provides and decorates festive trees in Garelochhead and Rhu.

In Rhu the lights could steal a march on those in neighbouring Helensburgh; a council spokeswoman said the authority was aiming to have the Rhu lights illuminated on Wednesday, November 22.

In Rosneath, meanwhile, a tree is provided by the local community, with the lights also due to be switched on on November 24.