Reading the Signs

Reading the Signs is the working guide to advertisement control that development management has lacked. Across thirty-eight short chapters it takes the officer from first principles to the hardest edge cases: when something counts as an advertisement, the three routes of exempt, deemed and express consent, and the two grounds, amenity and public safety, that decide every application.

Written in plain English for practitioners, it explains how an inspector actually assesses the merits, why clutter and precedent arguments so often go wrong, and how the sensitive area designations cut back the everyday consents. It deals candidly with enforcement: the offence, discontinuance, withdrawal of deemed consent, and the highway powers that are frequently the quicker route. It closes with the modern problems the regulations never imagined, including digital and changing-image displays.

A clear, honest and genuinely useful reference for anyone who has to apply the Regulations on a busy desk.