A metal sculpture in a central Bury St Edmunds street now resembles a dandelion blowing in the wind following an accident involving a truck.

A spokesman for St Edmundsbury Borough Council said a white truck had collided with the sculpture in St Andrew’s Street South, at the back of the Arc shopping centre, on Friday evening.

The work is one of two metal tree-like sculptures created by Nigel Kaines, of Designs on Metal at Stowlangtoft, using cash from the Arc developer Centros Millar, which gave £20,000 for public art in the vicinity of the shopping centre.

The controversial art installations were originally due to be in place in June last year, but were finally installed a year later.

The scheme had come in for criticism from some quarters, with claims that it was a “waste of money”.

Following the damage to the metal tree, councillor Paul Hopfensperger tweeted with the hashtag #IToldYouItWouldn’tTakeLong.

Mr Kaines, who heard of the damage on his return from holiday, said: “I’m disappointed it’s been clobbered, but it’s in a street. It’s in a public place and these things happen. I feel quite philosophical about it.”

He said he is currently not concerned about the location of his works, but if something similar happened again you would ask ‘are they in the right place?’

A borough council spokesman said: “We have evidence from a couple of CCTV cameras and we know where the vehicle was delivering so we expect to recover costs through insurance once we identify the owner of the vehicle.”

The plans for the art installations were rubber-stamped by St Edmundsbury Borough Council’s Bury Area Working Party and were installed by Suffolk County Council contractors.