Man on mission to clean filthy village road signs
Retired lawyer believes council ‘failing in duty’
A man who has cleaned more than 100 dirty road signs in a South Downs village has pledged to carry on his spruce-up.
Sixty-nine-year-old retired lawyer Sandy Pratt took it on himself to scrub clean road signs around Storrington after seeing they were ‘in an awful state with no one doing anything about it’.
Many were filthy, with overgrown foliage making them unreadable.
West Sussex County Council, which is responsible for the signs, thanked Sandy for his work after learning of his exploits.
But the council warned people to take care if working close to the highway.
And a council spokesman said: “There’s information on how local communities can help tackle certain highway issues safely – including cleaning signs – by working with us through Community Highways Partnerships.”
But Sandy, who is helped in his sign-cleaning by friend Malina Swann, maintained the council was ‘failing in its duty’.
And, he vowed: “I will continue doing my bit to improve things in some small way.”
He said the council should consider ‘how dirty, grimy signs detract from our lovely villages and countryside and act accordingly’.
Signs warning motorists to remove valuables from their cars when parking in remote locations have been installed at beauty spot car parks by Chichester Police. Having received funding from the Joint Action
Group (JAG), the local neighbourhood policing team printed and placed signs around the Chichester district in ‘beauty spot’ car parks.
It comes in response to an increase in theft from vehicles.
Police said criminals were known to ‘target these areas’.