Government Relaxes Rules Surrounding Outdoor Ads

The government has relaxed a number of regulations surrounding outdoor advertising. The Department for the Environment, Transport and the Regions has announced changes to laws regarding the erection of advertisements in rural areas, which until now had been designated Areas of Special Control of Advertisements.

Such control forbade advertisers from placing ads in the majority of rural areas. This regulation has now been dropped, effectively opening up large tracts of farmland across Britain to hoardings and billboards.

Advertisers will still have to apply for permission to erect an ad, however, and Steven Marshall-Camm, planning policy officer at the DETR, played down fears that hoardings would begin to appear in areas of natural beauty. “The impact is not as dramatic as some newspapers have been claiming,” he said. “Advertisers will still need consent from the local authority in which they wish to erect the ad, which won’t be granted for attractive areas.”

The change was the result of a consultation exercise earlier this year, which sought to update the regulations surrounding outdoor advertising, which had not been modified since 1992. Areas of Special Control of Advertisements, which previously covered most rural areas, will now be restricted to land within a national park, the Broads, an area of outstanding natural beauty, a conservation area, or a site of special scientific interest, and these definitions will be reviewed every five years.

DETR: 020 7890 3000