A passionate gardener who has held his plot on a Norwich suburb allotment for almost 10 years is furious after his greenhouse was banned by council officials.
Simon Cornish, 69, has been told to remove his greenhouse from Thorpe St Andrew Town Council's Hillside community allotment, where he has happily gardened since 2014, due to the fact it has glass windows.
Mr Cornish says that although it has never been enforced, the council has always had a ban on traditional glass greenhouses due to the fact they shatter easily, but his offending orangery has "modern tempered safety glass" which he claims is almost indestructible.
He even replaced the tired old hothouse he inherited when he started at the plot in order to make it safer, but still the council says it must go by December.
But Mr Cornish is not giving up without a fight and has written a letter of protest to the council and even reported them to the National Allotment Society, whose patron is King Charles III himself.
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Mr Cornish said: "Most organisations that run allotments ban glass ones but they usually allow these as they are modern and safe.
"It's horticultural glass which is the problem and because people usually use stuff they've been given there are some terrible greenhouses up at Hillside so I can understand why they've done it.
"There's no discussion they just ban it all. I'm so annoyed because I thought I'd done the right thing in replacing mine.
"I had a spare one with the same glass as mine so I tried to break it but I just couldn't do it, the only thing which would break it is dropping it from a great height.
"Ordinary ones break in hot weather, but my greenhouse is not cheap it's real quality.
"They won't even come down and check to see for themselves."
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In response, the council apologised for the inconvenience caused but said few people had been impacted and most that had been had "complied with no issue".
A council spokesman said: "The blanket ban of glass greenhouses was necessary across the two town council allotment sites as we have seen damage occur which poses a safety risk to tenants, their families, our officers and the ground itself due to contamination.
"We unfortunately cannot guarantee that appropriate structures will be purchased for the plots, which is then impossible for us to police.
"We have also had repeat instances of plots being left in a poor state of repair and therefore cannot trust that any breakages would be appropriately cleared and responsibly recycled."
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