Crackdown targets unauthorised street signs

ARGYLL and Bute Council has endorsed a clampdown on unauthorised street signs – and could charge businesses to advertise on its land.

Planning officers acknowledged progress had been ‘ unacceptably slow’ after the issue was first raised four years ago, but ‘good progress is now being made’ to end ‘the moratorium on unauthorised signage’.

New regulations will take a ‘carrot and stick’ approach, offering alternative advertising space on council land, backed by enforcement. Councillors are due to decide in October when to implement the new rules.

‘This is terrific news; it’s almost finished,’ Councillor Roddy McCuish told the planning committee in Lochgilphead on May 18. ‘The last thing we want is all the A boards out again but they’re coming out already. We need to stop this.’

Councillor Neil MacIntyre added: ‘No- one seems to have a licence for any sign in Oban. They’re illegal. I don’t understand why we let these things go on when people don’t have permission. Businesses are fed up with it, and so are we.’

As early as 2012, a report stated, councillors had raised concerns ‘over the number of unauthorised signs along road corridors, on pavements and attached to street furniture in towns and rural areas.’

Planners sought ‘to deliver a strategy that balances business needs along with obligations of the council to ensure pedestrian and traffic safety and to protect the visual appearance.’

Now the council’s latest report has proposed a way forward: phase one, led by planning services, will devise a regulatory regime, to be ‘balanced’ by phase two, led by customer services, aiming ‘to raise revenue from selling council advertising space’.