roadside hoardeing

ROADSIDE ADVERTISING IS THE WRONG MESSAGE

Another problem for countryside lovers is – quite literally – looming on the horizon.

You meet it when driving along the A 120, A 130, A 127 and A 12.  This is where you will see the menace of the roadside advertising hoarding. Large trailers draped with advertising slogans have been appearing in fields close to these major routes.  They are definitely  intrusive and blight the countryside – as well as being a dangerous distraction to drivers who should be concentrating on the road ahead. It seems that a legal loophole is allowing companies to get away with this unsightly advertising gimmick. 

Because these advertising trailers have wheels – but are going nowhere – they appear to escape the planning regulations set out in the Town and Country Planning  Regulations 1992 and  the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) order of 1995.  Moving vehicles – with wheels – are exempt from the strict controls on advertising.  But does this mean that trailers which are planted in fields and farmland close to main routes are escaping prosecution.  Apparently so because the law is confusing and no one has yet challenged the legality of the situation.  CPRE National office  are aware of this growing trend and are trying to get Government to review the planning laws which covers wheeled trailers that are parked permanently on farmland and use for advertising purposes.  But, in the end, it’s the local planning authority who has to make a final decision. 

Now BBC Essex have taken up the issue and highlighted the increasing number of trailers appearing on roads throughout the county.  CPREssex Press Officer David Williams was interviewed recently on the morning ‘Breakfast’ show.

It’s now up to us to make more people aware of what is happening.   We have to take up the matter with the local Planning Authorities.  Their resources may be thin on the ground but with clear-cut guidelines and the law on their side, it should be possible to use prosecutions as the way to stamp out this menace. So write to your local paper; contact the Planning Departments and local councillors; make sure the problem of roadside advertising is stamped out before it spreads to other parts of the county.  CPRE have been campaigning on this issue since 2005.  It may take time for the law to get its act together but, at the moment,  companies who promote this form of advertising and land-owners see it as a way to make extra money. It’s just another example of the way Essex is being pressurised by changes and developments that are eroding the countryside.   We can’t ignore the issue of trailer advertising and now is the time to raise concerns about the way Essex is being targeted by those who don’t understand  the benefits of an uncluttered landscape

Back garden under threat?

How many people realise that their own little corner of England, the back-garden, is actually classified as a brownfield site?  And how many home owners are now using this classification to support their plans to sell off parts of their gardens to developers who promptly put in extra homes and flats on these green urban lungs? 

The problem has been highlighted by Conservative MP Greg Clark who has introduced a Private Member’s Bill to remove gardens from the definition of brownfield sites.  More people are looking out of their kitchen windows and seeing pound signs sprouting among the lupins and dahlias. In some cases the neighbours object; in others they join forces and sell off larger chunks which were originally part of adjacent properties. 

Nature is the loser in all this.  Birds disappear, trees and shrubs ripped out and the effect causes lasting damage which, in the long term, makes urban living even more stressful for all of us.  But the Government have set a target of 200,000 new homes a year to try and reverse the chronic housing shortage  - yet only 160,000 were completed last year.  So the spiral of house prices is fuelled and first-time buyers find it even more difficult to get on the first rung of the property ladder. This is just another threat to the environment.  As Gordon Brown takes office takes over and promotes his intentions for overhauling the planning system, so the creeping threat which has long been feared in villages and towns across the country has now taken root in our back gardens. 

Yes, we need more homes – but not at such a high environmental cost.  The older Victorian and Edwardian homes that provide character to many towns in England are also blessed with larger than usual back gardens.  Should they be sacrificed as well by a crazy quirk in the planning system?