Changes to a Marlow shopping street that have been in the pipeline for more than three years are set to start over the bank holiday weekend.

The long-awaited makeover of Spittal Street – which was first announced in January 2015 – will start on May 7 and include new paving and drainage channels, as well as wall-mounted LED lanterns to replace lamp posts in a bid to free up pavement space.

The joint project between Wycombe District Council (WDC), Marlow Town Council and Sorbon Estates was earmarked to start mid-May, as confirmed by WDC last month, but will now start earlier, on the first bank holiday of the month, mayor Jocelyn Towns confirmed at a meeting of Marlow Chamber of Trade and Commerce this week.

The contentious improvements were unveiled by the town council as part of its Vision for Marlow in January 2015 and were initially planned to go ahead in April that year.

However, the £200,000 project was delayed until April 2016 due to problems arranging the costs, and then postponed again, with the town council admitting the plans had “gone back to the drawing board” last year.

WDC said the work, expected to last between 12 and 14 weeks, will be carried out overnight between 10pm and 6am to minimise disruption as the road will be closed and diversions put in place.

Bucks County Council’s head of highways, Mark Averill, confirmed at the Marlow Chamber meeting that pavements will be open to the public during the day unless something major is found that needs to be "dealt with".