An estate agent is fighting to keep the sign over its door.
Red Door Homes in Rochester, Kent, has been told by the local council to pay an £800 fine and take the sign down.
If it does this, it will not be able to re-erect the sign and so is going to court on September 1 to fight its case against Medway Council, which says the sign is advertising.
If Red Door Homes, run by director Andrew Wicking, loses the case, it could be fined over £2,000 as well as lose its sign.
The agency – an NAEA, ARLA, SAFEagent and TPO business – signed the deeds for the property in October 2013. After refurbishment – which included getting rid of the unsightly old sign pictured below – it moved in during April 2014.
Careful thought was given to the new sign, which was intended to be in keeping with the high street in Charles Dickens’s old home town.
It was decided that a Charles Dickens quote – “Every traveller has a home of his own, and he learns to appreciate it the more from his wandering” – would be very fitting.
This quote appears under the agent’s logo, but there is no contact information such as a phone number or website address. The sign appears not quite over the agent’s door but to the side of the building.
After it went up, Medway Council contacted the agents and asked them to remove the sign, telling them that planning permission was a legal requirement for all signs “with a purpose of advertisement”. As the sign had a logo on it, it was deemed an advert.
The agents then asked the council what would happen if it removed the logo, so that the sign no longer represented an advert.
The council officer, according to the agency, seemed to think this was a great idea and “would let us know. We never heard back”.
The firm is now running a campaign on Facebook and Twitter to be allowed to keep the sign up with the quote, but removing its own logo.
We have invited Medway Council to comment.
Councils appear to vary considerably in their requirements when it comes to signs, some requiring planning permission and others not.
A number of councils simply prefer to offer advice, even where signs appear in conservation areas.
EYE would be interested in your experiences.
The old sign that was replaced…
What the Dickens is wrong with this new sign, below, that the council dislikes it so much?
Comments (4)
I had a similar issue, I received a letter informing me that I had ten days to take down a sign advertising my business because it was on a side wall without a shop window in contravention of planning restrictions.
I wrote back stating that previous occupiers had a sign of a similar size and standard in exactly the same location for at least ten years. Whilst I believe this to be true I only had quite limited evidence such as a 2009 Google Streetview image.
The council accepted without further argument that because there’d been a sign there, unchallenged for ten years it had gained consent by default.
no out of London council has any money. I wold invest in a letter from a big shot London lawyer who knows what talking about. if they think they are in for a costly fight I bet they would back down.
This doesn’t surprise me at all, I had many exchanges of opinion with Medway Council.
One for instance sticks in my mind.
Having gone Independant in 1993 I applied for planning permission on a newly acquired single storey, flat roof, end terrace office.
I wanted a sign on the flank wall & a flagpole on the roof.
The sign was refused on the basis that there was no window in that wall.
The pole was refused on the basis that it would look unsightly. When I questioned this refusal asking then why it was ok for the likes of McDonalds to erect poles? The answer was simply that ” they can afford better lawyers to fight the decision than you can!”
You can see that Red Homes has a fascia, it would be nice to have just the Dickens quote on the side elevation board. I am sure the public would make the connection from the colours.