Time has been called on Shepton Mallet's iconic High Street clock after numerous attempts to get the temperamental timepiece working.

Shepton Mallet Town Council has weighed up the options for the clock's future and decided that spending more money to get it working accurately is futile.

Council chairman Chris Inchley said: "Time is soon about to stand still.

"The town council has decided to call it a day on the town clock in the High Street.

"This prominent timepiece used to indicate the location of the Post Office and also do what clocks are supposed to do: tell the time. Unfortunately, for many years, it has singularly failed in both of these simple functions."

Mr Inchley said that the council's efforts to ensure the clock tells the correct time have "repeatedly failed".

"Some years ago specialist clock-makers changed the internal mechanism assuring us the clock would only lose a minute every five years," he said.

"Yet it has never kept good time before or after this overhaul. Successive councils have spent thousands of pounds over many years trying to make it work and tell the correct time."

The council weighed up three options for the timepiece - make another expensive attempt to fix the clock with no guarantee of success, remove it and put it in storage "at an even greater cost to the council", or leave it in situ and set the hands permanently to 12 o'clock.

"We chose the last option since few of us today rely on public clocks to tell the time," said Mr Inchley.

"The clock will of course remain a part of Shepton's street scene, but we can't justify spending thousands of pounds trying to make it accurate."