A mayor has waded in to the thorny issue of planning applications by assuming the guise of a local hedge.
Chichester mayor Peter Budge took a leaf out of the method acting book this week when he spoke as a piece of local fauna in a bid to save it from being replaced under a café’s extension.
The Chichester Observer reports that Budge rose to the occasion during a speech at the district council’s planning committee.
He is reported to have said: ‘I am talking on behalf of the hedge. This poor hedge has been deluged with many horrible things saying it’s a tatty hedge, a horrible hedge, but let me tell you, it’s an English hedge.
‘I provide a perfectly good habitat for birds and the idea of killing me and moving me a metre forward to the detriment of myself is not on, quite frankly.
‘They want to plant a new hedge, a new me, in front of me, and quite frankly there’s an irony to this. They want to move me so they can have more seats inside and the irony of that is when it rains, they won’t get used.’
Despite the best efforts of the budding actor, councillors voted unanimously to approve the plans for the café’s extension.
