Saturday, December 05, 2009
A COUNCIL yesterday defended its decision to bar a 27-year-old man from his local library because of his body odour.
Stuart Penman was banned from Wigston Library in Leicestershire for six months after complaints from fellow visitors.
Staff at the library say they have advised Mr Penman about his personal hygiene but were forced to act after more and more visitors left the building when he arrived.
Margaret Bellamy, head of library services for Leicestershire County Council, said: "We’ve been getting complaints for about a year. We’ve sat down with him to see what can be done and even asked him if he’s been washing, using deodorant and regularly changing his clothes.
"We’ve had people leaving and saying it’s because of the smell. I feel very sorry about the whole situation and it’s not a decision we took lightly but we’ve done all we can.
"When people were refusing to come into the library we felt we had no other option."
Mr Penman, who lives with his mother and his girlfriend in Wigston, said he never received a warning from the council.
He told the Leicester Mercury: "I have a bath every day but I realise my feet do smell. I live with my mum, who smokes, so I smell like cigarettes.
"But I feel I’m being picked on because they don’t like me. I went in on Wednesday morning to use the computers and nobody said anything to me and when I went back later that evening I was told I’d been barred."
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