Queen’s 90th birthday bunting BANNED after health and safety cops say it’s dangerous

HEALTH and safety officials have been branded 'Little Hitlers' after warning bunting to mark the Queen's 90th birthday will be banned at a town's carnival organisers wade through mountains of red tape.

Lostwithiel’s annual carnival could be less colourful this year after authorities declared the public could be put in danger by the bunting. 

The traditional, fluttering ribbons could be a 'public menace' if the bunting touches someone’s face or falls on the ground and trips people up. 

Cornwall Council's public safety squad has told carnival committee they must obtain a licence to put up the street decorations.

The Royal bunting will be banned unless they get written permission from “every property owner affected” by the ribbons.

Lostwithiel Rotary Club, which organises the annual July carnival week, must “supply the location where every piece of bunting will be attached, including house and street names and the consent of the property owners”.

Cornwall Council said: “Inappropriately hung bunting can create a danger to highway users, as can setting it up without taking suitable precautions.

”Event organisers have a duty to undertake a risk assessment when erecting bunting, and record what measures they have taken to mitigate risk."

One Rotary member, who asked not to be named, said: "This is bureaucracy gone mad — they are power-hungry Little Hitlers.

"How can they say bunting is a menace to public safety — it's absolutely ludicrous and bonkers.

"People all round the world have hung up bunting for generations — what about Trafalgar Square when we celebrated the end of World War Two?

"I don't remember stories of anyone getting strangled by bunting falling down on their heads, for goodness sake!"

Organisers have been issued with ten conditions which must be adhered to before a licence is granted to hang up the bunting along the carnival route.

Rotary club secretary Paul Bassett has told the owners of shops and houses along the route that unless they give written consent, bunting can't be attached to their properties. And if there are too many gaps there will be no point in hanging it up. 

He said the committee has been told it has to comply with the 1980 Highways Act governing bunting, even though it has put the colourful decorations up with no problems for decades.

He said: "Rotary has organised the carnival and erected and brought down the bunting for not quite the 36 years since the 1980 Act, but this has now been brought to our attention and if bunting is once again to adorn Fore Street, The Parade and North Street then we need to have the consent of all property owners in those streets to whose property the bunting is to be attached.

"If we don't receive sufficient consents to be viable to erect the bunting, it will not be erected."