It may be romantic but as far as the council is concerned ‘love locks’ on the suspension bridge in Chester are a potential health and safety hazard ripe for removal with a bolt cropper.
It was back in 2013 that personalised padlocks began appearing on the Queen’s Park suspension bridge, as symbols of everlasting love, in a craze made famous after part of the Pont de Arts bridge in Paris collapsed under the weight of 700,000 of the locks.
Cheshire West and Chester Council was forced to play cupid in reverse by shooting down the romantic gestures on health and safety grounds. CWaC engineers said the extra weight of the padlocks had brought the bridge ‘close to its theoretical capacity to resist the effects of wind loading’.
Loved-up couples were given just three weeks to collect their special locks before they were taken down by the council and that was supposed to be the end of that.
But true love will never die which perhaps explains why the locks have made a comeback and are appearing in ever greater numbers attached to the metalwork.
But the council says the position has not changed and the locks are being periodically removed before the craze gets out of control.
CWaC spokeswoman Laura Johnson said: “We are keeping an eye on the ‘love locks’ and they are being removed on a regular basis.”
She said the locks were kept in storage for ‘a couple of months’ after their removal and could be retrieved, albeit the lock will have been cut.
The padlocks have divided opinion in the city ever since they became visible on the bridge.
At one time couples flocked to the bridge to put locks on the much-loved landmark with many using the tokens to express their love for each other after getting engaged or renewing their wedding vows.
One couple even got engaged on the bridge after Daryl Cross engraved a padlock with the words ‘engaged here’ before proposing to his fiancée Verity Howard.
But one anti-romantic male was caught on camera after dark cutting down locks with a pair of large bolt croppers.
