Terry Grimley asks how a crude and grotesquely out-of-scale sculpture for Moseley got through the planning process

In the normal course of events I would have as little interest in trying to prevent Birmingham cashing in on its links with JRR Tolkien as I would in trying to read one of his tedious books.

But the Tolkien bandwagon has just rolled over my turf in a particularly idiotic way.

A small and persistent group of Tolkien enthusiasts has succeeded in winning planning permission to ruin the centre of Moseley Village, still clearly recognisable today from photographs taken a century ago, by erecting a huge stainless steel statue of an Ent – a tree-person of Tolkien's invention – on the tiny village green.

My objection to this ludicrous proposal, shared by many other Moseley residents, is simple.

1. The planned sculpture, designed by Tolkien's great-nephew Tim Tolkien, is a piece of kitsch junk.
2. It's a piece of kitsch junk which is 6.5 metres, or 21ft, high.

To put that into perspective, it is only ten centimetres shorter than Antony Gormley's Iron: Man. Leaving aside the fact that Gormley is an artist of international stature and Tolkien isn't, the crucial difference is that Victoria Square is a very large open public space and Moseley village green is slightly larger than a pocket handkerchief.

What's more, it's in a conservation area. And the installation of this ridiculous sculpture could result in the loss of existing semi-mature trees. Real ones.

So how has this absurd proposal received the endorsement of the local planning officer and the approval of the planning committee?

The answer seems to be that objectors have simply failed to get their act together. The planners were apparently impressed by the fact that 327 letters of support were received, even though, as I understand it, these were mostly in a standard duplicated format.

On the other side, 117 people signed a petition against the sculpture and there were 40 individual letters of objection, seeming to give a majority of 2:1 in favour among local residents.

But whereas support for the sculpture was actively pursued at the popular Moseley farmers' market, there was no equivalent campaign to recruit opposition. There are four people in our house alone who would have signed the petition had we known there was one.

And then complacency kicked in. The neighbour who alerted me to the threat last year later told me he believed it had been averted. The Moseley Society also believed that the statue's promoters had been deterred by the level of hostility they had encountered.

The planning committee's decision on March 1 therefore came as an unpleasant shock and has taught us all a lesson about relying on planners and politicians to enforce common sense.

To add a touch of farce to a story which is already grotesque, the secretary of the Moseley Society attempted, unsuccessfully, to have one member of the planning committee excluded on the grounds that his fondness for dressing up as Gandalf might imply he was not entirely impartial.

The planning officer's report to committee acknowledged that at a public meeting held in April last year a proposal to reject the scheme outright was supported by 41 people present, with 15 in favour of it and eight abstentions.

She also made this interesting observation: "The proposed sculpture depicts a Tolkien character in order to attempt to create a link between the Tolkien connection to Moseley [sic] and to encourage business to the area. I have no evidence to suggest that this proposed development would achieve this end."

In concluding that the sculpture "would not harm the historical character or appearance of the surrounding area as it would be read independently from the surrounding area" she was expressing a personal opinion to which she is entitled. But it is a difficult one to understand when you look at the visualisations.

If this wrongheaded scheme goes ahead it will prove highly divisive in Moseley. I'm not qualified to judge whether or not it will stimulate trade in the village, as traders hope it will and the Moseley Society believes it won't, but I'll tell you this: if that thing goes up I'll be doing my shopping somewhere else.