Exhibition road signs - A word of warning

[Hugh Flynn]

Well here we go again ,we have just had confirmation about road signs for our exhibition.

The local council now want them made to highway standard,must be secured with bandit type strapping no tie-wraps

and also want £100 for each sign put up and if you do not remove them by set date fined and charged for storage 

if they remove any.

 

Lets hope this does not end up the norm?

 

We have now decided not to put them up?  

 

Hugh

[Colin_McLeod]

The Council are correct. I would not want to get injured by a sign that fell off its post even if it is advertising a model railway. It's no great deal to remove them promptly. The £100 fine etc is only relevant if you leave them up too long.

[Hugh Flynn]

Hi

No they want £100 for each sign put up?

Hugh

[Colin_McLeod]

Sorry I misread your post and stand corrected

My Local Authority only charge if signs are still up after the event. £100 each is extortion.

[Nick G]

Last year at our model boat event the council said we had to apply for planning permission to put sign up. There was a council event on the following day (Tom Jones concert) in the park. So all our members went round photographing all the signs up advertising this event. We went to the council and challenged them asking if they had applied for planning permission of course they hadn't. 

[MartinWales]

Ahh.....Nick, it's not unusual!

[Nick G]

 

 

Ahh.....Nick, it's not unusual!

 

And Martin....not funny 

[Kenton]

I wonder if this is all part of a revenue earning excercise - easy target dreampt up by some jobsworth. Perhaps we should all form up in a slow moving convoy and when asked what the problem is respond with "trying to find my way to the Model Railway Show"

[Western Star]

This sounds so familiar...  the scenario in Basingstoke about five years back, at that point our Club decided to contract with a third-party for the creation, erection and removal of signs in accordance with council guidelines.  OK, possibly dearer than doing the job within the Club - the benefit is that the work is done to a standard, on-time and without hassle.

[Webbo]

We use pointed 2x2 timber posts about 4ft long with the sign near the top and hammer them into the ground directly in line with the poles for signposts close to roundabouts. We put them up after 5pm on the Friday when all the council workers have gone home, remove them immediately after the gig on the Sunday. What the council don't see they can't complain about.

Alan

[Hugh Flynn]

Hi

Its not the point of doing signs to a standard or securing them its the £100 per sign put up, we put up around 12 signs so £1200 before you start is hard to swallow

And that's on top of public liability insurance.

We will be doing flyers with direction map on and put postcode for sat navs. Also when we get nearer show inform mags etc no signage will be used,

Hugh

[cctransuk]

I wonder if this is all part of a revenue earning excercise - easy target dreampt up by some jobsworth. Perhaps we should all form up in a slow moving convoy and when asked what the problem is respond with "trying to find my way to the Model Railway Show"

 

No, it's the law !!

 

See Ss.132, 148 & 149 of the Highways Act, 1980; www.ukroads.org/webfiles/Highways%20Act%201980.pdf .

 

.... and before anyone states that these signs cause no problem I can, from long professional experience, state that incidents of damage and injury caused by such amateur signs were and are frequent.

 

Regards,

John Isherwood.

[avonside1563]

Might be worth asking the AA for a quotation for road signs.

 

One advantage of road signs is they can also provide an extra form of advertising on the weekend of the show.

[cctransuk]

We use pointed 2x2 timber posts about 4ft long with the sign near the top and hammer them into the ground directly in line with the poles for signposts close to roundabouts. We put them up after 5pm on the Friday when all the council workers have gone home, remove them immediately after the gig on the Sunday. What the council don't see they can't complain about.

Alan

 

A somewhat naive position to take !!

 

Do you really imagine that council officers roost in their offices over the weekend, oblivious to what goes on within their area of resposibility.

 

During my career in local government I regularly called out standby gangs to remove unauthorised signs, and you may be sure that the responsible advertiser was charged the full cost of manpower and vehicles.

 

If you don't bother to request consent, or comply with any conditions applied to such consent, you can't complain if your local authority adopts more draconian measures.

 

Regards,

John Isherwood.

[arran]

HI All

 

At ST Andrews we once had a fight with the council over putting up a banner across the street, it made the papers and everything and eventually i got the the alleged person in charge and low and behold the problem went away.

 

As for small road side ones it seems to be accepted practice locally so long as you take them in after no one bothers you and we are in council property.

 

Regards Arran 

[cctransuk]

HI All

 

At ST Andrews we once had a fight with the council over putting up a banner across the street, it made the papers and everything and eventually i got the the alleged person in charge and low and behold the problem went away.

 

As for small road side ones it seems to be accepted practice locally so long as you take them in after no one bothers you and we are in council property.

 

Regards Arran 

 

How many times have you seen the local church bazaar, (or whatever), advertised with a banner fixed across a pedestrian guardrail at a crossing point?

 

Have you ever wondered why pedestrian guardrails often have the vertical bars in offset groups?

 

The answer to the latter is to allow drivers to see through the barrier and determine if a child / dog is about to run out into the road.

 

The former completely blocks all sight of what is going on on the pavement behind the banner.

 

Food for thought !!

 

Regards,

John Isherwood.

[rab]

Going off topic slightly the ones that really annoy me

are the old bed sheets with greetings spray painted on,

which get hung from footbridges etc. and are

sometimes left there for days.

 

We have a roundabout at the end of our road and every so often

one of these 'greetings' is hung over the arrow board

denoting the direction of travel around it.

Totally illegal I'm sure, but as no one in an official capacity

has time to deal with it, it's allowed to go on.

[Kenton]

 

We have a roundabout at the end of our road and every so often

one of these 'greetings' is hung over the arrow board

denoting the direction of travel around it.

 

 Here too.

Really lowers the tone of the neighbourhood. There's one up today that has been up for about a week. Embarassing, should be, for the individual.

[arran]

How many times have you seen the local church bazaar, (or whatever), advertised with a banner fixed across a pedestrian guardrail at a crossing point?

 

Have you ever wondered why pedestrian guardrails often have the vertical bars in offset groups?

 

The answer to the latter is to allow drivers to see through the barrier and determine if a child / dog is about to run out into the road.

 

The former completely blocks all sight of what is going on on the pavement behind the banner.

 

Food for thought !!

 

Regards,

John Isherwood.

I know that but ours were of the buildings either side of the street way above the traffic height, and it was me that has to do it.

 

Regards Arran

[Steven B]

Could you offer free tickets to people who live on the route to the exhibition in return for putting a sign up in their garden? If it's a temporary structure and on private land there's not much the council can do about it!

 

Happy Modelling.

 

Steven B

[Joseph_Pestell]

I had this problem with our local authority (London Borough of Merton) back in the mid 80s.

 

Here, the council gets itself planning permission for advertising signs on roundabouts. I told them that this would lead to multiple illegal signs along the roadside. They assured that this would not be the case. Guess who was right.

[Butler Henderson]

Could you offer free tickets to people who live on the route to the exhibition in return for putting a sign up in their garden? If it's a temporary structure and on private land there's not much the council can do about it!

Happy Modelling.

Steven B

Actually yes they can, for one there is no such generality as a temporary structure not needing permission per se (the main exception is if the accommodation provided is needed whilst works are being carried out on the building). Signs in any case fall outside of normal planning permission and instead fall under the advert regulations, any permission required being "express advertisement consent". Many signs do not need permission but fundamentally displayed at a property they have to relate to the use of the property only. The only non highway directional signs which do not need consent are those directing to housing developmen., however signs for a "local event" are permissible subject to size limits (below) What I would suggest to any exhibition manager faced with having to apply for their signs is to apply for the signs to be displayed for x days per annum which would avoid, assuming consent is granted, having to apply each year. Such an application can only be assessed on the grounds of amenity and public safety; its usually the latter that directional signs fall foul off with the Highway Authority when consulted with the application objecting to clutter and driver distraction.

 

Signs however can be displayed in respect of an exhibition but are strictly controlled by the regulations which only permit without applying for express consent a max size of 0.6sq.m., no illumination, a limit of 30cm or 75cm on the height of any character or symbol on the sign, a height above ground of no more than 3.6m or 4.6m (measured to the top of the sign) and the signs not not to be displayed more than 28 days before or 14 days after the exhubition.

 

Source: Class 3D at http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2007/783/schedule/3/made

[Barry O]

Hugh

 

we have had this problem in Leeds. In our case the Street Lights are part of a pFI and SSE demand payment for attaching signs (temporary or otherwise). The only people who seem to add signs are Leeds City Council - using tape, cable ties, the odd bit of string. Are they ever removed..err no!

 

No point in arguing so we can no longer add direction signs to our show. The AA know this and will put up signs but they ain't cheap.

 

In our case it appears that there is one rule for the council, one for elections and one for everyone else.

 

Baz

[Guest]

Going off topic slightly the ones that really annoy me

are the old bed sheets with greetings spray painted on,

which get hung from footbridges etc. and are

sometimes left there for days.

 

We have a roundabout at the end of our road and every so often

one of these 'greetings' is hung over the arrow board

denoting the direction of travel around it.

Totally illegal I'm sure, but as no one in an official capacity

has time to deal with it, it's allowed to go on.

 

We had one of those here in sleepy North Norfolk a while back.

"Happy birthday Margaret! 50 today" it said.

Better still was the one someone had hung up next to it which said

"Nobody gives a sh*t".

They both disappeared very soon after.

[Titan]

If you can park a car legally in an appropriate place, mount the sign on a roof rack and leave it there for the day. Sod all the council can do about it then.