A woman trying to host a Royal wedding street party has been told she must take out £5million in public liability insurance.
Hayley Mills says she received a 30-point plan from Medway Council after she inquired about having a celebration in Rochester.
Other instructions included an order that bunting could not be strung any lower than 16ft 6in high because of health and safety risks.
Her complaint today came after David Cameron attacked councils for using red tape to stop people holding parties on April 29. The Prime Minister, furious at some local authorities making it difficult, told people to ignore the bureaucracy and start organising.
He stressed that the only approval needed is permission to close a road and demanded that councils ‘don’t interfere’.
But Mrs Mills dismissed his intervention, saying it ‘sounds good’ at Government level but is not filtering through to council officials.
She told BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme: ‘[I was told I] had to nominate a person to take responsibility for virtually everything – health and safety, food safety and other people’s behaviour.
‘If I was the nominated person, then I had to take out public liability insurance to the tune of £5m insured value. We had to get our council’s permission to tie bunting to the lamp posts.’
Councillor Chris White, from the Local Government Authority, admitted the instructions sounded ‘a bit daft’.
‘My advice to anyone finding their council being daft is to go and talk to your councillor,’ he said.
‘I am pretty certain most councils will want to shove aside any unnecessary red tape and get people celebrating. We are democratically elected and frankly you don’t want to go into the next set of elections in May after raining on someone’s street party.’
He too stressed that the only crucial issue was gaining permission to close a road because of sensible access fears.
But he said: ‘People should just persist – if they are having problems. They should go to the council and say “hang on a second guys, why are we not being allowed to celebrate the Royal wedding in a sensible way”.’
Mr Cameron said yesterday: ‘I know that there have been stories about petty bureaucracy getting in the way of party planners.
‘But people who want to come together to celebrate with their neighbours should go ahead.
‘To those councils that are asking small groups of neighbours for licences, insurance and other bureaucracy, my message is clear: Don’t interfere. Let people get on and have fun.’
Medway Council said it had approved all seven applications made for street parties and had helped residents by extending the application deadline twice.
It added: ‘Any costs for public liability insurance will be fully reimbursed by the council and we have also waived the costs of arranging the road closures, which includes providing residents with all the cones and signs they’ll need to close their road.
‘Our form simply asks those wanting to hold a royal wedding street party to give us their name and address, when and where they want to hold their party, proof that their neighbours are happy with this and details of insurance.
‘We are here to make sure everyone has a thoroughly enjoyable royal wedding celebration”.
Source : Daily Mail
