The mayors of several large Dutch cities have slammed the outgoing government’s decision to allow people to set up “firework clubs” to organise fireworks displays during the New Year celebrations.

They say the plan is unworkable and risks undermining the nationwide ban on consumer firework sales which is due to come into effect at the end of this year.

The plan envisages mayors granting licences to neighbourhoo clubs that will have to be registered with the chamber of trade. Those responsible for setting off fireworks will also have to take an online course.

Local authorities will be able to introduce their own additional rules taking local circumstances into account. But Nijmegen mayor Hubert Bruls, who chairs the national safety board association, said staff shortages are already acute on New Year’s Eve, even without organised events.

“I need every police officer, firefighter and ambulance crew I have just to keep things under control,” he said. “I simply do not have the capacity to supervise organised fireworks.”

Allowing firework clubs, the mayors say, risks recreating the very chaos the ban is meant to prevent.

Bruls said he hopes the government presses ahead with a straightforward nationwide ban for the coming New Year. “Perhaps it sounds cynical,” he said, “but after the violence of the last New Year’s Eve, even people who were against a ban now see the need for it.”

The emergency services, local councils and some national politicians have long campaigned for an end to the sale of fireworks to consumers, apart from the very lightest type.

Every year the New Year is celebrated in the Netherlands in a firework frenzy resulting in lost limbs and eyes and millions of damage to private property.