Mayoress banned from clearing dead window-box flowers

Health and safety at Cheltenham Borough Council has gone too blooming far. That's the view of town mayor Barbara Driver, who said she was not allowed to tidy up the dead flowers from her own window box and balcony at the Municipal Offices. Armed with a plastic bag, she was poised to lean out from inside the building to uproot the drooping blooms from their window-ledge containers which she said looked terrible. But she was bemused when council officers told her it was against health and safety rules.

Instead the authority told her it planned to bring in a portable hoist to retrieve the plants from outside. Mrs Driver said: "It's ridiculous. I could have leant out of the window and pulled the flowers out in a matter of minutes. I couldn't believe it when they told me I wasn't allowed. To pay someone to be hoisted up there to do it is absurd. And at a time when the council needs every penny it can get, it seems like a real waste of money."



Straight-talking Mrs Driver said the flowers in the window boxes had become an embarrassment to the town and called for them to be replaced. "They look terrible," she added. "When I have mayoral functions I have to close the blinds to make sure they are out of sight. To think they are being left like that during Cheltenham Literature Festival – one of our biggest events of the year – is just not good enough. We've got thousands of people flooding into the town and there are dead flowers outside our Municipal Offices.

"They need to be replaced. I would sort it out myself but apparently I'm not allowed to." Council chiefs said they normally used a hoist to remove the plants because it was the quickest method – and because there were health and safety issues linked to doing it by hand. But this year, they said they had been unable to hire the equipment in time. However, following Mrs Driver's complaint, they said they had decided to remove the flowers by hand instead.