Union flag banned over health and safety

[dutchman]

A council has banned the Union flag from its building because a health and safety assessment concluded that scaffolding would have to be erected to raise and lower it.


The flagpole atop Colchester borough council's Rowan House office block has remained bare since the building was purchased from Anglian Water two years ago.

A frustrated Conservative politician was so concerned that he presented a Union flag to the council's Liberal Democrat leadership and offered to climb the roof himself to make sure it was flown.

A council spokeswoman said the absence of a flag was a "logistical operational matter" and insisted the building, Rowan House, had an unusual roof which made it difficult to access the flagpole.

Will Quince, the Conservative prospective parliamentary candidate for Colchester, said: "I cannot believe that a flagpole was put on top of this building that is inaccessible. This seems to be absolute health and safety nonsense.

"I'm happy to go up there and put it up myself.

"I'm incredibly proud to be British and it pleases me greatly when I walk around the town to see many people who proudly display our Union flag. I think it's really sad we can't fly it for health and safety reasons."

Anne Turrell, the Liberal Democrat council leader who received Mr Quince's 6ft by 4ft flag, said: "Health and safety won't allow us to do it, unless we scaffold the building.

"That costs thousands of pounds and I'm sure the taxpayers of Colchester wouldn't want us to spend that to put a flag up."

A council spokeswoman said: "It is a very strange shaped building with triangular roofs, and there are no access points.

"It is a logistical operational matter and advice has been taken from the health and safety adviser. We regularly have flags on the town hall, which is a very prominent building just half a mile away from Rowan House."

She was unable to confirm whether the council had looked into using alternative methods to hoist the Union flag, such as deploying a cherry picker or steeplejack.

In 2004, councillors in Trowbridge were told that a Cross of Saint George could not be flown on the town hall because scaffolding would be too expensive and leaning out of a first-floor window was too dangerous.

In May last year officials at South Kesteven district council initially claimed that similar health and safety risks meant a Union flag could not fly on the town hall at Bourne, Lincolnshire, for Armed Forces Day. They relented when a spiked fence below the flagpole, which was the cause of the safety concerns, was boxed in to avoid any danger to life or limb.

[StevieG]

There is such a thing as a Jet Pack but they have probably have not the intelligence to know about such an invention