A NEW monument designed to commemorate the nation's battle with Covid has been put on hold, due to the project going 'over budget'.

Proposals for the ‘Nightingale' memorial statue in Vulcan Park, Workington were submitted by the town council to the borough council last June, with the project expecting to be complete by the beginning of next month.

However, due a sprinkler system that will be activated every hour, the project has come in over budget.

The town council tendered out for quotes for solar panels that will power the system - with the only respondent returning a quote of £6-8,000 for the panels.

At a meeting of the council last Wednesday, councillors questioned the amount of money that the system would cost - and sent the proposals back to the committee stage for further work.

Councillor Barbara Cannon said: "We have been summoned to an EGM (extraordinary general meeting) tonight.

"We are here to discuss what is effectively a shortfall in funds by a substantial amount of money.

"I am unsure why this is a special meeting and I think that this should have gone back and been discussed in the commitee where it started."

Councillor Cannon also expressed concern that she had never seen the monument as part of any budget and said that she thought it was 'about time this matter was sorted out.'

Councillor Cannon suggested a motion at the meeting. 

The motion was: "This matter is referred to both the finance and general purposes commitee to look at the budget and the options that are available to the council for the money, and that it is also referred to the environment commitee for further conversations about installation and timescales."

The motion was carried unanimously at the meeting.

Speaking after the motion, the town clerk explained to the council why an extraodinary general meeting was called.

She said: "The reason the meeting was called was because we knew we were going to go over budget, we had a timescale to put the monument in by the beginning of April, the next full council meeting wasn't in time for us to actually secure that and the reason we had it tonight is so that all the people who are ready to put the monument in can go ahead.

"Now, with this, the monument will now be around May."