Waitrose has written a cheeky message to an overzealous city council after it fenced off a joke wonky advert over fears of 'public safety'.

The retailer erected the squint billboard on Lindore Road, in Wandsworth, south-west London, as a marketing stunt to promote its falling prices. 

But safety-conscious Wandsworth Council quickly erected fencing around the billboard after they received a call from a concerned resident that the billboard looked like it was about to fall off.

Now Waitrose's social media team has cheekily wrote a public message to the council on Twitter/X which read: 'Hi - thanks for the swift action but while our prices are falling rapidly, our billboard certainly isn't! #noneedforbollards.'

Waitrose's official Twitter/X account with 340,000 followers seemed to be enjoying the confusion. 

In a separate post to the official Specsavers account, Waitrose asked: 'One for you guys?'

Waitrose erected the squint billboard on Lindore Road, in Wandsworth, south-west London, as a marketing stunt to promote its falling prices

Waitrose's social media team cheekily wrote a public message to the council on Twitter/X

But not everyone seemed get the joke, with some social media users criticising Waitrose for the confusing advert.

The wonky billboard gives no clues about its structural integrity and only features a caption reading 'well this is good, new lower prices on hundreds of your favourites', with some pictures of food items either side to an arrow pointing to the advert's wonky bottom corner.

One Twitter user labelled the row over the advert as 'clickbait'.

Another said: 'This is just s***, Waitrose. Do you think people who live in this area want a decrepit looking poster on the wall? Would you like one opposite your house? Why do you have nothing but contempt for your customers?'

A third simply wrote 'idiots'.

While a fourth commented: 'Waitrose fell into the classic trap! They underestimated the stupidity of the British public. Not to mention the stupidity of the local council!'

But the row now appears to be over with the council confirming to the Guardian on Saturday that the barriers had been removed

In a statement, Wandsworth council said: 'We were alerted to this unusual advert by a concerned member of the public and while we could see it might be deliberately set up to look that way, we thought better not take any chances with public safety so put up some barriers to be on the safe side.

'Once we'd spoken to Waitrose and established it was designed to look this way we removed the barriers straight away.'

The row over the advert comes as Waitrose continues to push its cost-cutting campaign. 

Earlier this month the supermarket said it will reduce the price of more than 200 'weekly shop' products - making it the fifth time the retailer has announced price cuts since February 2023.

The company, which is owned by the John Lewis Partnership, reportedly invested £130million over the period.

The campaign comes after a MailOnline investigation in July discovered Waitrose had the highest cost for an average basket of goods out of the UK's eight major supermarkets.