A ridiculed ’tourist attraction’ in Aberystwyth which cost taxpayers £6,000 to build and thousands a year to maintain will cost residents for a final time as £1,500 is paid to council workers to remove it.

Aberystwyth Town Council has agreed to pay the money to Ceredigion County Council to remove the rope labyrinth on North Road after councillors said that due to the extent of the work they needed to pay someone to do it.

The £1,500 will bring the total spent on the much-maligned labyrinth, built in 2013 using 720 wooden posts linked by a mile of rope, to more than £10,000 since it was built in 2013.

It has been rarely used, and was described by residents and visitors at the time as “horrendous” and “weird”.

The £1,500 to bring an end to the life of the labyrinth will be paid to Ceredigion council, with workmen removing a section of fence and the labyrinth, storing the poles and ropes, filling in the holes with course sand, and creating a ramp to enable access for maintenance machinery.

The council approved the payout at a meeting in May, after previously recommending that councillors could volunteer to do the work.

The Cambrian News revealed in 2017 that Aberystwyth Town Council made two payments totalling £2,580 to the Care Society, an Aberystwyth-based charity, for maintenance works at the rarely used facility during the previous financial year.

It has also paid for the labyrinth’s upkeep through Ceredigion Council workmen.

See this week’s Aberystwyth paper for the full story, available in shops and as a digital edition now