The Court of Appeal today ruled that a pair of large illuminated advertising hoardings by Putney Bridge in London, operated by JC Decaux, need “express consent” from a planning authority even though they are within a building.
The ruling backs both an earlier judgment in the High Court and a 2017 decision by a planning inspector, and relates to a property called Riverbank House, owned by Putney Bridge Approach Ltd.
The two advertising hoardings in question measure around 8m x 4m and are at a glazed end to the building. They are “digitally illuminated and feature automatic sequential change of message”, according to the letter.
The adverts were displayed “pursuant to deemed consent” under the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. This was because they were inside a building, not outside it.
However, in October 2016 the local planning authority issued Putney Bridge Approach with a discontinuation notice requiring it to stop using the site for illuminated hoardings.
The notice said that “any illuminated advertisements displayed in or behind the windows of the building in this open setting would be considered to result in substantial insurgent to the amenity of the locality”, including views over two conservation areas and Putney Bridge itself.
The LED screens, the notice said, were “overly large, dominant and incongruous features, particularly during the hours of darkness”.
However, lawyers for Putney Bridge Approach argued that the notice was “draconian” because it appeared to ban “any” form of illuminated advertising anywhere in the building.
In his ruling today, however, Lord Justice Coulson disagreed. He said that the argument overstated the effect of the notice.
“All the [notice] did was to bring and end to the [planning authority’s] deemed consent to the illuminated advertisements on site. That deemed consent was, by its very nature, general in scope: it existed because the advertisements in question were inside the building,” he wrote.
“The [notice] did not prevent the appellant from making an application for express content in relation to any advertisement in any specified form.”
He refused the claimants permission to appeal the case to the Supreme Court.
Putney Bridge Approach Ltd v Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government and the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham
Court of Appeal (Hamblen LJ, Hickinbottom LJ, Coulson LJ) 19 October 2018
