Burnley Town Hall staff scramble to catch 'snake'
The venomous reptile turned out to be an old bucket handle.
Town hall staff were scrambled to catch a snake in a house cellar – only to find the venomous reptile was actually an old bucket handle.
The story of the alert was told by Burnley Council leader Cllr Afrasiab Anwer to the authority’s full council meeting on post-devolution local government reorganisation.
He said it demonstrated the importance of keeping council services close to residents,
Cllr Anwar told Wednesday’s meeting: “I got a call yesterday from a resident who said that they had gone into their cellar and they had found a snake – a Cobra.
“They didn’t know who to ring so they rang me as a local councillor and said can you deal with this?
“I was in a panic because I had never had to deal with this before.
“So what do I do?
“I tried the RSPCA, I rang the local vet to see if they had an exotic pets department and then I rang street scene and asked them to pick it up.
“They were just as surprised as I was.
“Do you know what they did?
“They jumped into action.
“And one of them declared himself the ‘snake patrol officer’ for street scene at Burnley Borough Council.
“He said: ‘Give me the address. I’m going to get there in 15 minutes.’
“So two of them from street scene – and I applaud them – they went.
“They turned up at this resident’s house and they into the cellar, they opened the door and one of them went to grab the snake.
“It was an old bucket handle.
“But the point I am making is that they rang us because we are local enough and accessible enough and we’re in touch with them.
“That is what you are going to lose.
“Why do they feel that – because we are connected to our communities; we are part of our communities so they will ring us for anything.
“Our officers are so good that we have relationships with them so that when we ring them they jump into action.
“That’s what we are talking about when we talk about what does a local council do.
“Keep the local in local government.”
Cllr Anwar told the ‘funny story’ as he appealed to his colleagues to back his proposal to create five unitary authorities for Lancashire after devolution in April 2028.
The meeting unanimously backed his preferred structure which would see his borough in one of the all-purpose councils with neighbouring Pendle and Rossendale rather than an alternative three unitary model merging them in with Blackburn with Darwen, Hyndburn and Ribble Valley.