01/12/10….Campaign group slams council’s roundabout adverts policy
DESPITE accepting that advertising signs on its roundabouts in South Oxfordshire are both unpermitted and a traffic hazard, Oxfordshire County Council still wants to keep them!
According to CPRE (Campaign for the Protection of Rural England), Huw Vaughan Jones, the County?s Principal Highways Engineer, has said: “It is considered that the unpermitted signs, as installed, could constitute a highways distraction and therefore an objectionable level of potential risk to highways safety.”
CPRE have been campaigning against these commercial advertising signs since January 20006, when the County Council decided, with South Oxfordshire District Council, to erect them bringing, in CPRE’s view, “commercial advertising into our advertising free area contrary to the District Council?s specific policies.”
‘COVER UP’
Michael Tyce, of the Oxfordshire Campaign to Protect Rural England, said: “The cover-up by the two Local Authorities has been truly unbelievable. The District Council persistently declared that the signs had planning permission when they knew they did not, and that they could do nothing to stop the flouting of their own policies to protect the countryside which they themselves were engaged in.
“They have repeatedly denied, until now, that the signs represent a safety hazard, when it is obvious that their only purpose is to distract motorists at a critical moment. This means that for almost five years the County Council, whose job is Highway Safety, has knowingly sponsored a scheme which endangers it.”
Now the original five year contract term for the signs is running out, and the District Council is applying to itself for planning permission to continue for another five years.
In the process of the consultations about the 103 signs on 28 roundabouts throughout the District, of the eleven parishes and towns in which the roundabouts are sited, only one has approved the continuation of the scheme. Nine have strongly opposed it including Crowmarsh, SODC?s HQ, where the roundabout advertises the District Council itself, and Thame, where the District Councillor who sponsored the scheme, David Dodds, also sits as a Town Councillor.
District Councillors will meet on December 15, to decide whether the scheme should be allowed to continue.
Said Michael Tyce: “They will at last have a chance to enforce Council policies to protect the countryside from commercial clutter and make our roads safer by removing an acknowledged safety hazard.”
NOTE: Cllr David Dodds was unavailable for comment at the time of publication (16:00 hrs). If and when Cllr Dodds responds, his comments will be posted.
PHOTO: Advertisement that appears on one of South Oxfordshire’s roundabouts
