Vehicles for sale on the highway - Public forum - Planning Advisory Service (PAS)
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Started - July 2012
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Last activity - This week
Vehicles for sale on the highway
I am dealing with a number of reports of vehicles for sale on the highways in North East Lincolnshire. The people who are selling the vehicles are aware of the Clean Neighbourhood and Environment Act where it is an offence if the vehicles are parked within 500 metres of each other. The Highways Act Section 147a is a bit vague as Road Sales fall within Trunk and Principal Roads. Could the vehicles be breaching Schedule 1 Class B of the Advertisement Regulations as "an advertisement displayed on or in a vehicle normally employed as a moving vehicle". As the vehicle/s are parked and is displaying a for sale sign or a sign identifying the vehicle is for sale, would this be breach the Advertisment Regulations, have I interpreted the legislation correctly?
I consider it would be a breach of Class B, but you need to be sure you can prove that the vehicle is not 'normally employed' as a moving vehicle. Clearly this can be achieved easily by photographic evidence of the position of the vehicle and / or the position of two or more wheel values on the vehicle over a period of time (the longer the better)!
I am concerned that you are not going to resolve the problem with this approach. What if they remove the advertisements but retain the vehicles on the land. People often advertise elsewhere and people still go to view them on the road. It is surely the use you want to prevent. Also they could move the vehicles around a little, as they often do and cause you problems. I don't have a solution from a planning point of view, but would love it know if someone has one as we have this problem.
No as you would have to serve a copy of the Notice on the Highway Authority and you would not want to do that. The use of a highway other than for the passage of vehicles is an obstruction of the highway. Get some stickers with Local Authority Aware on and put them on and get your local police manager, or beat booby to everybody else, to stick a fixed penalty notice on for obstruction. Or, if you have an integrated team, ask the non-planning enforcement team manager how best to co-ordinate an approach.
I have problems with these types of cases, so forgive me if my frustrations come out in my post. Having tried to get to the bottom of this matter it is clear to me that (subject to the individual characteristics) there are a number of different approaches / legislation that could be used to stop this happening, all of it much quicker and a better deterrent (eg Fixed Penalty Notice) than the lengthy options under planning legislation. If the problem is a persistent one it is worth getting together with Highways, Police, Environmental Helath etc and thrashing out a quick protocol as who and how to deal with these cases, or you might be going around in ever decreasing circles. Now, if you were to ask me how to get rid of a kebab van, or signwritten vehicles, I could perhaps help more.......