Killjoy Council?

THE HIGHWAYS AUTHORITY (The County Council) has come in for plenty of stick over the difficulties of organising street parties for the coronation. Pages and pages of forms to fill in with details most people would not know. Apparently, this was pretty much the case everywhere

Once you had been made aware of the rules if you had gone ahead anyway you would not only face possible actions by the authority but would have been personally responsible for damages if anything went wrong

End result? Very few parties. Nobody had to jump through these hoops when the world wars ended or when Queen Elizabeth II was crowned. We claim to be both a Monarchy and Democracy and some think big money rules us (a plutocracy) but it seems we are actually a Bureaucracy when nothing happens without the permission of civil servants.

The only way it seems to have been possible to celebrate is on somebody’s private land.

Locally, Newtown Linford excelled by virtue of a friendly farmer lending them a field. About 400 attended.

Quite when these onerous rules crept in on us is not clear but Glenfield used to celebrate the build-up to Christmas on the Square but in recent years has had to retreat to its own property.

Cllr Roy Denney

County Council reply

ANYONE that wanted to have a road closure were able to, as reported in part of the leader’s statement on Wednesday 17th May at LCC Annual Council meeting:

Coronation of King Charles III

Further to your announcements, Chairman, I would like to say that in order to help Leicestershire residents celebrate the Coronation of His Majesty The King, we waived the standard fee for applying for a road closure or holding an event on highway land adjacent to the road to facilitate street parties and celebrations.

In total we approved 151 applications, comprising 120 road closures and a further 31 for permission to hold an event on highway land.

Leicestershire County Council also provided traffic management guidance and advice to event organisers and loaned 220 road-closed signs and over 500 traffic cones to event organisers.

I hope our communities across the county had an enjoyable and safe Coronation celebration.

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