Councillors will ask a church in Oswestry to come back with their figures clarified in a bid for a council grant to help renovate a new building.

The church will moving to a premises in the centre of town in Market Gate, leaving their Laburnum Drive base, and will expect to pay around £20,000 for the renovation work.

In its application to Oswestry Town Council for the grant, the church say that around 20 community groups will be using their facility and that they they expected to raise £10,000 of the funds.

But councillors were unsure whether the figures provide by the church added up – with Councillor Mike Isherwood believing they were out of date – but Cllr Vince Hunt called for more information from the church before any application was accepted or rejected.

"[Their] new accounts won’t be available until March 2020," he said.

"If it’s a large amount of money (already in their account) then ask why they’re asking for more."

Cllr Isherwood also stated that he felt unable to support that the money could be potentially used to fund church revenues, taken from the community group use.

The vote to ask for more information was agreed unanimously.

Meanwhile, councillors at the finance meeting held last Monday, also agreed to not spend money on replacing Christmas lights for the last two years of a contract with Blachere Illumination.

Replacing the lights – with some coming to the end of their shelf life while some failed last year – would have cost an additional £2,500 but would have been within the council's budget; however, all agreed with Cllr Hunt when he said: "We will keep it as is.

"It is not worth spending £5,000 for just two years when the contract ends."