A Merseyside ice cream man said he lost thousands of pounds worth of business after the council banned him from displaying his popular plastic cow.
John Hughes has been selling ice cream from his West Kirby shop, Artisan Gelato, for two and a half years now. Since the beginning, he has had his plastic cow seat, called Tracy, outside the shop for customers to enjoy.
Yet, Tracy has now become the centre of a spat with the council, who have ordered John to remove Tracy from the pavement outside after a single complaint was lodged about the lack of space on the pavement outside his shop.
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John told the ECHO: "I opened the business two and a half years ago and I've tried my best to enhance West Kirby, to bring something to West Kirby. As soon as we opened I put the cow outside. The children love it.
"People just love it. We were going to have a competition to name the cow, but one of our good friends passed away during lockdown, so we named it after her, after Tracy who was a really good friend of ours.
"Tracy the cow just makes people smile, even people who don't come into the shop, they stop by and take photographs, it just makes people smile.
"Over the last four weeks West Kirby on Grange Road has had a new pavement area installed. The council moved the planters that West Kirby in Bloom had placed and put them in the park while the pavement area was built, and when it was completed three weeks ago they put the planters on what was the actual pedestrian walkway.
"When we put the Tracy out on the very first day [after the pavement installation], somebody complained there isn't enough distance between our furniture and where the council put the planters.
"The council then came straight round and said you have to move all your outside furniture, take all of it away, and that we had to reapply for a pavement license.
"We reapplied and we put the furniture out and put the furniture out on Last Monday, but by the afternoon we'd had a message from the council saying that we needed photographic proof that there was 1.5 metres between the flower bed and the furniture, and that we had to reapply again."
Tracy is still not allowed outside as John awaits his new pavement licence. He said his business has suffered heavily as the shop looks closed without the cow and other furniture outside.
He said: "People in the general area are all asking where the cow is. They're not happy because it's a feature of West Kirby.
"The other thing is the work took three weeks and we weren't allowed anything, signs or Tracy, outside for three weeks, even on the hottest day of the year. So we looked closed for three weeks and we lost thousands of pounds of trade.
"It's all about the flower beds. These flower beds, they want them on the walkway just to stop the lorries parking on the pedestrian walkway and breaking the new pavement slabs.
"If they wanted to stop the new paving slabs getting broken they should've put up barriers or something else.
"One flower bed has caused all this problem, and Wirral Council are adamant that the flowerbeds are staying where they are and if that means that we lose business then so be it as long as the paving slabs don't get broken. They're not really bothered about our business.
"I'm very proud of where I come from. To show that I sponsor a local football team, I always try to give back to the local community, every Christmas we raise money for different charities, it's always about giving back to the community.
I started off two years ago trying to make the most affordable ice cream on Merseyside. It was always about making people smile."
A spokesperson for Wirral Council told the ECHO: “Wirral Council has recently refurbished this section of Grange Road, to replace a damaged and unsightly footway with an attractive paved area which is safe for pedestrians with all accessibility needs to use.
"To keep the footway in a high quality, safe condition the council is looking at different ways of keeping heavy delivery vehicles off the footway.
“A pavement café licence application is currently being considered for Artisan Gelato. However, a safe footway and free movement of pedestrians within the national regulations set out for pavement licences has to be of primary importance.”
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