Health and safety cashes in on panto Smarties
A COUNCIL banned an amateur theatre group from selling chocolate bars and cans of pop at a pantomime on health and safety grounds then sold the audience the very same sweets and drinks – at twice the price.
The Dewsbury Collegians have sold chocolate, tubes of Smarties and bottles of lemonade every year for decades to raise funds for their shows and nobody has ever been injured.
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But when their Dick Whittington show opened at Dewsbury Town Hall in West Yorkshire, the catering manager insisted it would be dangerous for members to sell crisps, chocolate and fizzy drinks themselves.
Instead Kirklees Council bought the refreshments at cost price and council staff put them on sale. But packets of crisps that would have gone for 40p were on sale at 80p. Chocolate bars doubled in price to 80p and drinks that would have been 50p cost an extra 30p.
Panto organiser Malcolm Kenyon said: “I was confronted in the hall by a council official who said we couldn’t sell refreshments. We’d already bought the goods and they had been in the town hall kitchens three days.
“What is the health and safety concern about selling a sealed bottle of pop or a sealed packet of sweets?
“They gave us about £400 but we lost the chance to make a profit.”
The Collegians wanted cash from refreshments to go towards the £14,000 it needs to stage The Wizard of Oz in June.
A council spokesman said a ban on private sales of refreshments at the town hall was introduced last year because of the “potential health risk” posed by home-made cakes and biscuits.
But Kirklees Council leader Mehboob Khan said: “If this is accurate, that the council sold identical refreshments and put the money into council coffers, then I’m outraged. I will arrange for this matter to be fully explored.”
