A statue of Lord Nelson and the Captain of his Fleet will not be allowed to stay in Chichester permanently, the district council has decided.
Planning permission was given in 2020 to erect the resin and bronze statue of Nelson and Sir George Murray outside The Council House – Murray’s former home – in North Street, for five years.
A one-year extension was granted in 2025 and the city council submitted an application to leave the sculpture in place for good.
But the proposal received the thumbs-down from a planning officer on the grounds that, over time, the resin would deteriorate, causing harm to the Conservation Area and the setting of the Grade II* listed building.
A statement from the council’s conservation & design officer, which was included in the officer’s report, stated: “The statue is resin, and even with high quality components and the correct maintenance this has a
relatively short lifespan of 10-30 years in an external setting.
“The statue has been outside for a number of years already and will fade, soften and crack as time progresses. This is in contrast to other statues in prominent locations within Chichester which are fashioned in bronze which will weather and age in a manner consistent with the historic buildings which surround these locations.”
While acknowledging that the statue was ‘not without merit’, the officer added: “The statue is strangely proportioned, it is at a scale less than 100 per cent of an adult human. This is in contrast to the approach traditionally taken in the public realm which sees statues scaled at above 100 per cent in order to emphasise their impact.”
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