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December 2005
Local Development Plans...
You Can’t Put A Sign There!
The Association have recently lodged objections to the Development Plans submitted by Powys, County Council and Tendring District Council; both of which placed unreasonable restrictions on the number and style of signs that might be used in their areas.
The monitoring of local council’s Development Plans is an important aspect of the work done by the BSGA on behalf of its members and, as the year draws to a close, Edward Butterfield has been reflecting on the Government’s intent with regard to advertisement regulations and the importance of the Association’s Development Plan monitoring programme.
The original consultation document on outdoor advertisements was issued in 1999. The government today through the offices of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) wants to bring advertisement control in line with the general planning permission process. The aim they hope will reduce the number of appeals and as a result the total cost of the appeal process to the taxpayer.
For sign makers the key question was, where does signage sit within this general framework? The possibility that the Planning Policy Guidance for Outdoor Advertising Control (PPG19) could be abolished has receded but if local plans take precedence over amenity and public safety then obtaining consent for advertisements could become far more difficult. Central Government’s intention, as outlined in the Consultation Paper, was to delegate the responsibility for decision making down to local councils or failing those, to parliamentary select committees. This would ensure that planning decisions on controversial projects, such as the building of terminal five at Heathrow, did not impact on the national political scene.
Signage was thus caught up in the slipstream of national planning regulations, the potential outcome being that the existing criteria for approving advertising, namely public safety and amenity, would no longer be primary when a local council was considering a planning application for signage. These would become secondary to the requirements of the council’s Development Plan.
In this environment planning applications would firstly be judged against the requirements of an individual council’s Development Plan, of which there could be more than five-hundred in the UK, only then would the issues of amenity and public safety be considered. This could signal the end of national planning regulations as far as the control of advertising was concerned. At present the regulation and control of advertising falls under the remit of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) however, given the recent deluge of proposed parliamentary legislation, plans to revise the planning regulations have slipped down the priority list of the Government’s legislative programme. This change of emphasis in Whitehall has not however stopped councils from updating their local Development Plans, far from it; many have published amended policy documents. If allowed to go unchecked these could give councils the power to determine future policy on advertising in their locality.
One could argue that the national regulations still apply however; a local Development Plan may contain policies relating to signage which, if not challenged, could be detrimental to our industry. Should this occur and the legislation permitting local Development Plans to take precedence be empowered, our national planning regulations would be lost, only to be replaced by a myriad of local regulations each with their own idiosyncratic requirements. This would be a nightmare scenario for our industry.
To avoid this possibility the BSGA, together with the Outdoor Advertising Association, made the decision in 2004 to monitor local council’s Development Plans as they were submitted and to lodge objections where appropriate; the aim being to prevent restrictive policies becoming law.
The Association appointed planning consultant Chris Thomas to review all newly published local Development Plans and to lodge objections on the their behalf, where he felt the proposals ran contrary to current national guidelines relating to signage.
This year the Association have appealed successfully against a number of proposals for example, the requirement in the Haringey, Borough Council draft Development Plan, which stated that internally illuminated fascia box signs would not be accepted on listed buildings and in conservation areas. This phrase was subsequently removed from the document.
Similar objections were lodged against Lambeth Council’s Development Plan. The council however refused to make any further changes and our objections will now be submitted to the inspector before a public enquiry. Fife council in Scotland issued a plan restricting size, numbers and colours of signs; the BSGA have lodged an objection to this and other similar proposals from Swale, Wigan and Carlisle councils. In summary, if such policies are allowed to go uncontested and remain dormant in local Development Plans around the country then ultimately, when national legislation is passed making considerations of amenity and public safety subservient to individual local Development Plans, our national regulations would be history.
The latest news from the ODPM is that they intend to issue draft proposals prior to Christmas and after studying these, the BSGA will comment in due course. The role of the British Sign and Graphics Association in monitoring local Development Plans is a vital one. It is essential for the future of the sign industry in the UK that we have clear national planning regulations. National regulations provide a fair and uniform way of dealing with advertising and signage; we should continue to be robust in our defence of the existing arrangements. They should not be undermined by stealth.
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