A CAMPAIGN by a detergent company to offer cash to clean some of Britain's best-loved monuments has been welcomed by Wor-cester conservation chiefs, who say the city's Queen Victoria statue would make a prime candidate.

Flash is offering local councils the chance to get their hands on a £15,000 cash grant to return their prized monuments to their former glory.

Members of the public are being asked to nominate which statue they think deserves the cash at www.britainscleaner.co.uk by Wednesday, Septem-ber 6, with the monument with the most votes winning the prize. Worcester City Council's principal conservation officer Will Scott has welcomed the initiative, although he said any clean-up of the statue, outside the Crown Court in the city's Foregate Street, would need to be done carefully so it did not do more harm than good.

He said: "It would be very good and if anybody is offering £15,000 we should bite their hands off for the money. One of the problems with cleaning this is you have to take away a little surface material if you scrub it, so it really just needs washing with a neutral soap solution to take the pollution of city traffic off it."

Mr Scott's comments came after we reported at the end of last month that a descendant of the statue's sculptor, Sir Thomas Brock, also got behind earlier calls for it to be cleaned. Consultant engineer Ian Thompson - Sir Brock's great great nephew - was alerted to the statue's state by Worcester Museum and Art Gallery's collections officer Garston Phillips.

Mr Phillips - who is researching sculptures in the city - has also previously backed the campaign to get the statue cleaned.

Court manager Jan Lloyd also welcomed the latest news but said the court had tight resources for various competing demands. It recently had a quote for £10,000 for the statue to be cleaned.