Bar pictures set to get the Boot

Boards showing a man wearing knee-high PVC boots outside a Darlaston bar have been ordered to be taken down after planning chiefs said they had been put up illegally.

Bosses at the Kinky Boots gay cabaret bar put pictures up on wooden boards at the front of the former HSBC building in Walsall Road after its windows were smashed.

The council had received a barrage of complaints about adverts inside the venue since it opened last year but it had been powerless to act because they broke no laws.

But they say the new 4ft boards breach planning regulations, and the borough's development control committee are expected to order legal action at a meeting next week.

Darlaston councillor Chris Bott said she feared that the pictures were becoming a local landmark.

"You can't help looking at them every time you go past," she said.

"A lot of people in the area are against it, and I don't think the pictures should be there. I've got nothing against that sort of thing but I don't see why it should be pushed in people's faces.

"They can have what they want inside the place but there's no need to have them where they are."

A report by Walsall's head of planning control David Elsworthy said: "Each of the three windows in the classical part of the building contained a photographically produced figure of a partially undressed male, wearing long boots.

"Local concern was expressed about the content of the advertisements.

"Planning control is precluded from addressing the content of advertisements, so no significance can be attached to the comments which were made.

"The figures displayed all exceed the maximum size limit.

"The advertisements are relatively large and strident and are obtrusive in the street scene. They cover parts of the window frames and disrupt the appearance of the windows, as well as conflicting with the overall character of the building.

"Unlike many other breaches of planning control, displaying an advertisement without the necessary consent is a criminal offence."

No-one at Kinky Boots could be contacted for comment today.