Penrith Town Council's new £170,000 town centre signage scheme has been hit by an embarrassing series of spelling blunders, including signs directing visitors to "St Andews Church" instead of St Andrew's Church.
The mistake is among a number of errors discovered on the newly installed signs, that replaced the original town trail signage and the town councils new town trail which were supposed to showcase Penrith's history, heritage and local landmarks as part of a major town centre improvement project.
St Andrew's Church is one of Penrith's most recognisable landmarks, standing in the heart of the town, and is the first stop on the councils heritage trail that forms a key part of the £170,000 scheme.
But despite months of planning, design work and installation, the name of the church has somehow made it onto the finished signs with the letter 'r' missing from Andrew's.
It is an embarrassing oversight for a project specifically designed to promote Penrith's historic attractions, and raises questions about how thoroughly the information was checked before the signs were manufactured.
The spelling mistakes have emerged just weeks after Penrith Town Council announced that the installation of its Wayfinding and Interpretation Project had finally been completed, following delays that saw work continue beyond the original August completion target.
The council celebrated the completion of the scheme with press and regional TV coverage describing it as a major milestone in making Penrith easier to navigate and encouraging visitors to explore the town's history and heritage.
The £170,000 project, funded through the government's Borderlands Inclusive Growth Deal, has seen some of the towns previous way finding signs replaced with new fingerposts, visitor information panels, walking route maps and information about local landmarks, along with links to a digital heritage trail.
However, the discovery of spelling errors across the new signage has taken the shine off the council's announcement, with questions now being raised about who was responsible for checking and approving the final designs.
Councillor Scott Jackson, chair of the town council's Planning Committee, said in the council's announcement that the new signs were less imposing, more in keeping with Penrith and provided clearer directions and useful information about the town.
He also confirmed that the council had committed to maintaining and updating the signage, with a dedicated budget set aside for the work.
That commitment could now be put to the test considerably sooner than expected, with the council potentially facing the task of correcting or replacing signs that have only just been installed.
Whether the mistakes can be corrected without additional cost to the public purse remains unclear, along with how the errors were missed before the signs went into production.
The project was intended to give Penrith a fresh, professional-looking network of signs to welcome visitors and encourage them to discover more of the town along with a town trail app that also has its own issues with a map that fails to display the actual map due to an invalid api key message displayed instead for users.
Instead, the council has been left with a £170,000 scheme that cannot even correctly spell the name of the first landmark on its own heritage trail.
For a town council keen to celebrate Penrith's history, getting the name of St Andrew's Church right might have been a good place to start.
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