Bear Grylls is 'in trouble' with his local council, who have discovered (as he social media-ed it) that he has erected a slide on his own island, into the sea. http://www.telegraph.co....sea-slide-on-island.html Whilst there is reference to needing 'planning permission' (which is dubious too) there is a quote from a local councillor: "I am very concerned that an accident could happen on this slide, since there have been no discussions with planning or the health and safety department of Gwynedd Council." Since when, and under what edict, must private individuals discuss their play structure plans with council H&S departments? (PS - I can see no public risk from the photos of slide).

Politics is the only reason. As an aside, it looks pretty darn fun!!!

I hope there's water running down it, or there'd be some pretty good friction burns. Old bread wrappers used to do the trick in my day.

The slide is reportedly an item of play equipment on private property and solely for the use by members of the Grylls family, and perhaps also their personal visitors. If so, I tend to agree that it is not a matter for the local council as regards any health and safety legislation. However, if the island is within a defined "area of outstanding natural beauty" the slide might infringe planning requirements. Also, if the island is within a designated marine conservation area, it's just possible that slide users might infringe some part of related legislation if they physically harm or frighten fish and other marine life through repeatedly plunging into their environment!!! :-) The local councillor understands that the slide will "only be in place when Mr Grylls is on the island". This suggests that Mr Grylls aims to minimise his vulnerability to civil claims for injury which could arise through unauthorised visitors/trespassers using the slide without regard to the level of the tide below. The fact that Mr Grylls publicised the slide himself through Twitter (and subsequently reaped much wider media publicity) might tempt some people to visit and use the slide without consent. Just hope it is kept locked/chained against such use when the family are not present! Sadlass introduced this thread using a justifiable question for its title. To this can be added another question - why did Mr Grylls need to tell anyone other than friends and relatives about the slide? Some people might suggest that a significant clue can be deduced from the first 4 letters of Twitter, the publicity medium he chose to use! If he hadn't publicised the slide, he might perhaps have avoided "scoring an own goal" which brought the slide to the attention of local councillors. On the other hand, from what I've seen of some of Mr Grylls' programmes on TV, he seems to enjoy generating sensationalism and jeopardy.