Now here’s an odd little situation.
Rayleigh Town Council want to have 13 flowering baskets in Websters Way car park, just as they have in Rayleigh High Street.
They have been granted a license by the District Council to do this, and floral displays don’t require planning permission.
BUT the Town Council want to have 26 vwhite acrylic plastic plaques, 15cm x 23.5 cm , giving the names of the shops, organisations and individuals who have sponsored the displays, and these count as adverts, and they require planning permission.
So the Town Council have applied for planning permission, and the District Council officers are now recommending refusal , based on the advice of the County Historic Buildings Specialist. To quote from the officers report:
The County historic buildings specialist objects to the proposal. He notes that the car park has only recently been returned to the Rayleigh Conservation Area and as such its status should be taken seriously and conservation area standards applied as rigorously as anywhere else. He considers that the proposal would create obtrusive visual clutter, that use of an acrylic material is not appropriate and moreover that any visual benefit from the proposed hanging baskets would be negated by the unpleasantness of the signs. He does not consider that the plaques would either preserve or enhance the Rayleigh Conservation Area and states that to allow the proposed advertising would bring the conservation area designation into disrepute. He recommends that the application is refused.
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The application site within Websters Way car park occupies a key position within the Conservation Area, representing a landscape which illustrates the historic urban edge of where the town formerly met open countryside and from which there remain views across the adjacent King George?s Field. Whilst the car park itself has benefitted from considerable improvements with regard to
resurfacing, planting and provision of conservation area style lamps, it is noted in the Rayleigh Conservation Area Appraisal and Management Plan (May 2007) that Websters Way is the most problematic part of the Conservation Area. It is considered that not only would the proposal fail to enhance this difficult area but in addition the use of acrylic signage on the proposed scale introduces unsympathetic and incongruous features that in total will be visually detrimental to the character.
The application is on the weekly ‘yellow list’ – unless a district councillor calls it in by 1 pm on Wednesday, it will be refused.
You can download and read the full report here (it’s the second on the list)
By the way, it would be good if either of the councils could remove the advert that’s been fixed to a lamp-post in Rayleigh High Street advertising for “male and female escorts”….
Talk about creating beaurocracy!!! Could the Town Council use another material for the plaques? Alternatively one notice at the Civic Suite acknowledging all the sponsors? Seems unecessarily heavy handed to me, I thought “Coalition” was the “buzz” word?
The TC only want to make our town more attractive, & encourage visitors/shoppers. Goodness knows we need all the help we can get, otherwise Rayleigh will just become one giant tea-shop!
The advert for male models is fraudulent anyway. Why else would I have been turned down? Please make your comments stating the reasons as brief as possible to save space.
Why don’t they just put all the sponsors’ names on a bill board, nail it to an old caravan chassis, and dump it in a lay-by on the A1245 or A127?
Bruce
It is probably they were not looking for somebody as young looking as you.!!!
We could just go ahead and put them up anyway just like the large national shopowners do with their shopfronts and signs in the conservation area (e.g;Ask restaurants,Betfred Etc) By the time the district Council gets round to enforcement action the hanging basket season will be over
I think this application has been called in. It will be an interesting one for Michael Hoy to cut his teeth on at his first Development Committee meeting!
So why is the greenbelt not a ‘conservation area’, where development would not be allowed to spoil the countryside for all?
Green Belt areas and Conservation areas serve different purposes.
Green Belt covers areas of countryside – green fields and villages – to preserve their open character and prevent coalesescence of different communities. New developement is very restricted, although development for agricultural or recreation purposes will typically be allowed.
Conservation areas cover areas with buildings of historic character – for example in Rayleigh, or Battlesbridge. The aim here is to more or less preserve the appearance and character of these areas. The designation applies to the whole area, not just individual historic buildings within it.
You can have villages which are both in Green Belt and a conservation area. Suppose you have a pub with a large garden in one of these villages. The Green Belt designation prevents the pub owners from getting permission to build houses in the garden. The Conservation area designation prevents the owner from getting permission to have an internally illuminated sign.