FAO Piloti; please note final sentence:
Nelson's new victory Jul 26 2003
By David Bell, Evening Mail
City planners were celebrating victory today after winning the Battle of Nelson's Railings.
They have laid down the law to Bullring developers who want to place the
7ft 6in statue of the naval hero in St Martin's Square without the fence of infantrymen's wickedly spiked pikes that guard it.
The Birmingham Alliance is being allowed to display the fenceless Nelson at the grand reopening of the £500 million rebuilt shopping centre in early September.
But the developers have been given a strict three month deadline to put the railings back again.
Planning chairwoman Renee Spector believes her stand is backed by the Brummie public, and can brandish a full page of support in last Saturday's Evening Mail Readers Letters to prove it.
"The reaction of Mail read-ers shows we are right to stick to our guns," she said.
"The Alliance has asked us to have another look at the need for railings but we don't think this is necessary because the statue has been in Birmingham since 1805 . We know it quite well."
Developers claim keeping the piked railings represents "an unacceptable risk to public safety."
But Coun Spector said: "There is absolutely no record of anyone ever being impaled on them."
Councillors are particularly keen to keep the railing guard in the wake of the arson attack that incinerated the £275,000 Forward statue in Centenary Square.
But they are prepared to offer one sop to the Alliance.
"If they want to round off the spikes a little, I don't think anybody would object," said Mrs Spector.