In response to the recent announcement that the UK Parliament will be holding an inquiry into banning the sale of fireworks at retail, Gail Brocklebank, owner of Party Planet in Lincoln, shares her take on the news.
“We do sell fireworks all year round – it’s another little service that we have all year round that many others don’t bother with out of season. It certainly warrants us paying the licence and storage fees. We certainly missed them at New Year as we couldn’t sell them while we were in our temporary shop, because they had all been damaged in the flood.
I am not particularly surprised by the decision to try and ban the public from purchasing and I do believe it will happen one day. I know that they do cause some animals and people distress; they can be a noise nuisance, they may sometimes be let off by people not paying attention to the safety risks (not necessarily the purchaser!) and some people just don’t like them. All of these are argument for banning their sale to the public, but at the end of the day a display done by professionals will cause the same distress to animals and people, the same noise nuisance and they will probably go on longer than most garden firework displays.
I do understand that there may be fewer organised events rather than families having a gathering and letting a few off every other house but it isn’t all year and mostly our customers just want a couple for the garden for their kids or grandkids. We live next door to a family of firework lovers, who go mad on Bonfire night but I’m all for an easy life and don’t mind. It’s once a year. Not everybody wants to go to a big display – some families love doing a smaller firework display for the little ones.
I love to see the fireworks, it’s all part of the cold dark nights, cosy fires, Halloween and the run-up to Christmas. I hope it doesn’t come to anything but I have a feeling they will keep running with this until they do!”
