A COMMUNITY group has offered to tidy up a Worcestershire village hall which it branded an overgrown fire hazard.

Environmental officers visited Castlemorton Village hall last week, following complaints from Richard Dawe, chairman of the Hollybed Community Group, that undergrowth was obstructing a fire exit.

Stephanie Ingram, environmental services' commercial team manager at Malvern Hills District Council, has since written to the trustees asking them to cut back the undergrowth.

"The brambles would trip anyone up coming out of the fire exit, and, if anybody put a match to the undergrowth there, it would go up through the roof and take it off," said Mr Dawe, who has offered to cut back the undergrowth himself.

But Joan Bedford, booking clerk for the Castlemorton Parish Hall Management Trustees, denied the claims of the fire exits being obstructed.

"The brambles are around the back to stop vandalism and keep people away from the back of the hall," she said.

"The fire doors are not blocked at all."