LASERS will light up Weymouth seafront if planning permission for a new lighting scheme is given the go-ahead.

Artists have designed the scheme – costing almost £500,000 – that could see The Esplanade lined with seven 16-metre-tall steel columns.

The columns, which will replace the existing ‘fairy lights’ along the seafront, will project ‘a veil of light’ onto the sea on a rotation from dusk until midnight.

The present system will be removed in conjunction with the replacement of all the street lighting columns on the seafront by Dorset County Council.

The replacement of the lights is going ahead as part of what the council is still calling the Weymouth Seafront Regeneration Programme.

A spokesman has called the old lights ‘outdated’ and ‘redundant’ but said they are still in use.

They will be taken away by Dorset County Council, as the highways authority, before the new designs are installed.

Half of the funding for the project, to cost £450,000, has come from the Arts Council for England and the other half has come from the Regional Development Agency.

It is hoped that the scheme, which has been proposed as part of the overall Weymouth Seafront Regeneration Prog-ramme, will re-profile the town during and after hosting the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Lighting consultant Parsons Binkerhoff and artists Claire Oboussier and Vong Phaophanit, whose collaborative work goes back almost 25 years, have been appointed to take the project forward.

Vong Phaophanit said the project was about ‘acknowledging a fundamental element of the town’ and ‘creating a connective current between land and sea’.

He said: “There’s a natural attraction to the sea and one element of the work is to offer another opportunity to focus on that.

“Visually, it will be quite spectacular.”

Claire Oboussier added: “This is not just for the Olympics, it is for beyond the Olympics, and it will bring a fresh identity to Weymouth’s Esplanade.

“This is something which has been designed specifically for Weymouth and we hope it will offer something unique for the town.”

She added that the idea was to position each individual column at the main entry points to The Esplanade, which the artists are calling the main ‘arteries’ of the town.

Councillor Howard Legg, who is Weymouth and Portland Borough Council’s Special Projects and 2012 spokesman, said: “The emerging proposals for the new lighting scheme are really exciting and innovative.

“I believe they will help support Weymouth and Portland’s growing reputation as a resort.”

Colin Ellis, the conservation officer at Weymouth and Portland Borough Council, said if planning permission is given the green light, the scheme should be complete by July 2011.