Cheshire West and Chester Council has clarified that the city’s comedy Eastgate Clock will be fixed ‘as soon as possible’ after council leader Mike Jones confused matters by saying it was here to stay.

On Friday it emerged contractors had accidentally produced a mirror image of the clock face for a protective cover being used to hide scaffolding during restoration work.

The council press office issued a statement saying ‘time will not be allowed to march backwards for very long’ and confirmed to The Chronicle that the error would be fixed.

But council leader Mike Jones told Chester radio station Dee 106.3: “It’s on there for about six months. I think it will provide a great deal of interest to visitors. When they can’t see the real thing they can have a bit of a laugh about that.”

A council spokesperson today (Monday) made clear that the mirror image will be replaced with the correct Roman numerals ‘as soon as possible.’

Cllr Jones, who has tweeted about the Roman numerals being printed back to front, told presenter Gavin Matthews he was ‘amazed’ at the oversight.

“It’s almost as if it’s a negative, as though they have taken a picture and translated it the wrong way around, yet the 1897 is the right way around. I don’t know what’s happened there.”

And he agreed with presenter Gavin that it may become like the locally famous spelling error on the sign of city centre pub The Marlbororough Arms in St John Street.

The Marlbororough Arms in St John Street
The Marlbororough Arms in St John Street

But Cllr Jones added: “It does look quite smart. It’s better than the scaffold.” And he joked that the clock may tell the right time after all.

“Nobody has spotted whether the clock is going backwards which means it could be right,” he said. “I won’t say the name of the Twitter account but let him sit there and just watch it for a couple of hours!”

View our gallery of other council-related mistakes.