Now here’s an odd little situation.<\/p>\n
Rayleigh Town Council want to have 13 flowering baskets in Websters Way car park, just as they have in Rayleigh High Street.
\nThey have been granted a license by the District Council to do this, and floral displays don’t require planning permission.<\/p>\n
BUT <\/em>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<\/em> count as adverts, and they require planning permission.<\/p>\n 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:<\/p>\n 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. The application is on the weekly ‘yellow list’ – unless a district councillor calls it in by 1 pm on Wednesday, it will be refused. <\/p>\n
\n.
\nThe 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
\nresurfacing, 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n