BARROW AFC are making good progress with plans to replace the Holker Street floodlights this summer.

Three firms have submitted six-figure tenders to carry out the work of removing the existing pylons and erecting new ones at the Bluebirds' home.

The current structures, put up in the 1960s, have long passed their usefulness, and plans by AFC owner Paul Casson to refurbish them proved impossible due to the level of decay and corrosion.

Barrow intend to carry out the work to bring them down and put up new structures this summer, with the help of grants from the Football Stadia Improvement Fund.

To that end, they have engaged several companies to provide estimates for the work – with three needed for any submission for grants – and are now just waiting for final submissions.

Three bids have been provided, with a deadline of tomorrow night set for further companies to put in their tenders.

AFC chief executive Austin Straker admits the process has taken much longer than anyone expected – it had originally been planned for last summer and the very start of the season – but is now happy with where things stand.

“We're fairly comfortable with the floodlights at the minute – though it has taken months longer than anyone would have imagined,” he said.

“We're well under way, but we can't proceed to the Football Stadia Improvement Fund without three confirmed like-for-like quotes.

“We have three quotes in, with the deadline set for Thursday evening for any other quotes to be received.

“A little sub-committee of us will sit down on Friday to review them and see where we are.

“If any of the others that come in this week are better than any of the three we have already got, then they'll make it into the final contention.

“We have to sit down and look at one of them, where it seems that some of the items in the quote aren't necessary, they're optional. If that's the case, then that would put the price down, or there might be options there we want to take up. There is still work to be done.

“We are drawing up a spreadsheet, not just of the costs, but of what you are getting. They are differently-designed masts, differently-designed lights, and Paul will have to decide which he likes.”

He added: “They are quoting for the whole job – the civil engineering, the masts, the lights, the electricals, taking the towers down and dismantling them. It's an all-in figure.”

Straker hopes much of the work in bringing down the pylons and put up new stanchions will be carried out by local companies, though quotes have been sought from firms outside the area.

“They will be entirely new structures,” he added. If anything, it is the legs which are the weakest part of the structures, and it would be absolutely ludicrous to keep any of it.

“They should have been down last year, but we ran out of time in the close-season.

“There is a lot of work for them to do – they have to come and check on the electrics, on the state of the ground, they have to put the plans together and there is a lot of work that goes on when different companies work together.

“We're trying, within our principles, to work with as much local employment as we can. Some of the masts and lighting quotes have come from outside the town, but quite a bit of the engineering and the civil work is linked in with local companies.”

Work on the floodlights follows a recent ground survey which reassessed the capacity at Holker Street at 5,000 – following demands from the Football League that this figure be met if AFC were to be allowed in the National League play-offs.