Building ad must be reconsidered

There will be a fresh hearing before a different planning inspector

A council has suffered a setback in its campaign to have a huge "eyesore" advertisement removed from the top of a building at Swansea Gate Business Park.

Neath Port Talbot says the internally lit hoarding is detrimental to the street scene and character of the area.

Permission to retain the hoarding which measures 10.99m by 5.4m was first refused last June and later upheld by a planning inspector.

However, an appeal judge has now intervened in the case.

Mr Justice Wyn Williams has ordered a full reconsideration of the plea by local businessman Roy Granville David Thomas that the advertisement was merely a replacement for another hoarding that may have been in place for up to 40 years.

At a fresh hearing before a different planning inspector, Mr Thomas will now also be able to argue that, under planning regulations, the advertisement already had "deemed consent" and planning permission was not necessary in the first place.

Virtually identical

The judge said the advertisement was put in place on top of two-storey business premises before retrospective planning permission was sought and refused.

However, Mr Thomas' legal team argued the inspector had simply ignored the fact that there had been a marginally larger hoarding in the same place for at least 10 years - and, on the basis of an old aerial photograph, possibly for as long as 40 years - without any objection

Mr Justice Wyn Williams said: "Mr Thomas simply cannot understand from the decision letter why objection is now being taken on amenity grounds to the sign in question when a previous sign of virtually identical size in an identical location existed without objection for a substantial period of time".

Allowing Mr Thomas' appeal, and ordering a reconsideration of the case, the judge said the inspector had made "no express reference at all" in his decision letter to the "uncontested history" of the pre-existing advertisement, even though that was a "central feature" of Mr Thomas' appeal.

He rejected the council's arguments that the existence of an almost identical hoarding on the same site for many years was a "peripheral issue" of only marginal relevance.