Special congratulations are due to the Richmond Housing Partnership (RHP), a south-west London housing association, for its innovative development of healthansafety thinking.
RHP has banned its tenants from having hanging baskets, window boxes and pot plants on their porches and balconies, not because of the possibility that they might fall on someone’s head, but on the novel grounds that they constitute a fire risk. Really.
And not only has RHP succeeded wonderfully in making its tenants’ lives considerably less pleasant, but it has also found an enterprising way of making money out of the exercise. According to the Telegraph:
From now on, plant arrangements deemed to be a fire risk will be marked with a sticker which gives owners 24 hours to remove them before the housing association takes them away.
Once they are confiscated, their owners will have to pay a £25 charge to get them back.
I have to say that I was not previously aware of the incendiary properties of trailing lobelias, but clearly there was a serious and potentially calamitous gap in my knowledge.
So, well done, Richmond Housing Partnership, bright new talent of the healthansafety industry!
And I am sure that, once they have got over the temporary pain of handing over their £25 for the return of their empty hanging baskets, its tenants will be immensely grateful for having such a caring, forward-thinking, responsible landlord.
A novel way of raising cash. Once they get them back, can they re hang the empty baskets?
Perhaps the displays included Red Hot Pokers …
Perhaps the housing officials are themselves a fire risk due to all the hot air they are spouting.
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