Potentially distracting roadside referendum signs next to the M90 cannot be taken down by Fife Council despite a planning decision that they “would result in an adverse impact on road safety”.
Advertisements for businesses in neighbouring Kinross-shire have been removed after a planning decision made last week but an independence referendum banner put up in the same area for Better Together cannot be taken down by the council.
Fife Council service manager Stuart Wilson told The Courier: “Political signage is exempt from planning permission 28 days before an election and 14 days after.”
The ruling has been made despite advice from Transport Scotland to Fife Council stating the present signs may cause an unnecessary distraction to drivers on one of the region’s fastest roads.
It means signs potentially distracting drivers from the road, promoting both sides of the campaign, will be allowed to stay until after the referendum even as a pair of business advertisements currently on the M90, opposite the Amazon Fulfilment Centre, are taken down after the council’s decision.
The notices, promoting Kinross Stove and Cooker Centre, were the subject of a retrospective planning application and the council concluded both visual amenity and road safety were compromised by their presence.
The ruling concludes that were permission given for them to remain, it would set an “undesirable” precedent for other similar signage and advertising in rural locations and along busy roads in Fife.
Mounted on trailers, and about four metres long, the signs were deemed “prominent and incongruous”.
The council report says: “As the signs are located in the countryside and are changeable advertisements for businesses not in the vicinity it is considered that their location, design and materials make them a prominent and incongruous feature in the rural landscape and therefore fail to make an enhancement to the local environmental quality of the area.”
A Better Together campaign spokesman declined to comment.
Picture by David Wardle