Advertisement enforcement: when a council can make you take a sign down

 

Signs, banners, shop fascias and hoardings sit under their own set of planning rules, separate from the ones that cover buildings and the use of land. Advertisement enforcement therefore works differently as well, and the notice most people have heard of, the enforcement notice, is not the tool a council reaches for here.

Two quite different things can happen instead. Where a sign is already allowed, the council can take that permission away by serving a discontinuance notice, and you can appeal it. Where a sign was never allowed, there is no notice and no planning appeal at all, because displaying it is a criminal offence dealt with in the magistrates’ court.

This page explains both routes, who can end up in front of the magistrates, the defence that exists, and how long the council has to bring a case. It sits inside our wider guide to planning enforcement.

If you have not yet worked out whether your sign needed permission at all, start with our guide to advertisement consent, and with the list of signs that are allowed automatically in advertisement deemed consent.

Whilst we are happy to give you some help via this page, it is often easier to consult a professional. If in doubt – STOP – and reach out to us. We are here to help. Contact us here. 

 

 

When a sign needs consent, and when it does not

 

Every sign in England falls into one of three buckets, and working out which one yours is in decides everything that follows.

• a short list of signs sits outside the system altogether, so long as the display keeps to the conditions attached to it
• a much longer list of everyday signs already has consent, granted by the Regulations themselves rather than by your council, so long as the sign stays inside the limits set for its class
• anything else needs you to apply, and that is called express consent

The trap is in the second bucket. Consent granted automatically is not permission for whatever you happen to put up. Stray outside the limits for the class, on size, height above the ground, number or illumination, and the sign is no longer covered by anything.

 

What the council is allowed to take into account

 

This is much narrower than ordinary planning, and it is the first thing to check if you are arguing about a sign. The Regulations tell a council it may use these powers in the interests of two things only: amenity, and public safety. It has to take the development plan into account so far as it is relevant, together with any other relevant factors.

Amenity covers what a place looks like and what it sounds like, and includes the general character of the area, taking in anything of historic, architectural or cultural interest.

Public safety covers the safety of people using a road, railway, waterway, dock, harbour or airfield. It also covers whether the sign is likely to hide a traffic sign, a railway signal or a navigation aid, or make one harder to read at a glance, and whether it is likely to interfere with security cameras, surveillance equipment or speed cameras.

Notice what is not on that list. The council cannot normally control what the sign actually says. An express consent is not allowed to restrict the subject matter, content or design of the display unless amenity or public safety require it. So an objection along the lines of not liking the message is not a planning objection at all.

One more point worth knowing when the argument is about how a street looks. In judging amenity the council is entitled to leave your sign out of the picture and look at the place as it would be without it.

 

The discontinuance notice: taking away a consent you already had

 

If a sign already has consent granted automatically by the Regulations, the council cannot prosecute, because nothing unlawful is happening. What it can do is serve a discontinuance notice, requiring either that the display stops, or that the site stops being used for signs at all.

The test is a high one, and much higher than the ordinary question of whether enforcing is worthwhile. The council has to be satisfied that the notice is necessary to put right either a substantial injury to the amenity of the locality, or a danger to members of the public. Not simply some harm, but substantial injury. Not simply untidy, but a danger.

The notice itself has to do five things:

• be served on the advertiser
• say exactly which sign, or which site, it covers
• set the period within which the display or the use has to stop
• give the council’s reasons, both for saying substantial injury or danger has been caused and for saying the notice is necessary
• list the names and addresses of everyone it has been served on

Timing matters and it is generous by planning standards. The notice cannot take effect until the end of a period which must be at least eight weeks after the day it was served. The council also has to have regard to any material change in circumstances that has happened.

Before it takes effect the council can withdraw the notice altogether, and it can extend the period as many times as it likes. It loses the power to extend once an appeal has been made.

Be careful about who gets served. The word advertiser is defined widely, and it takes in the owner of the site, the occupier if that is somebody different, and anyone else who puts up or maintains the display. A landlord, a tenant and a sign company can all be on the same notice.

There is one narrow exception written into the Regulations, defined by a small overlap of two classes. If the council tells you your sign falls inside it, check the wording for yourself against the link in the legislation list below.

 

How to appeal a discontinuance notice

 

The right of appeal belongs to the people the notice was served on. If you were served and you are aggrieved by the notice, you can appeal to the Secretary of State in writing, and that holds good even if you never put the sign up yourself. A neighbour who simply dislikes the sign has no appeal here.

The deadline is the date the notice is due to take effect, taking into account any extension the council has given you. Get the appeal in before that date. There is a safety valve here that does not exist for an ordinary enforcement notice, because the Secretary of State may allow a longer period, but it is a discretion and not a right, so do not plan around it.

Appealing suspends the notice. It has no effect at all until the appeal is finally determined or withdrawn, so you do not have to take the sign down while you wait.

Three documents have to go in with the appeal:

• a copy of the discontinuance notice
• a copy of any notice varying it
• copies of any relevant correspondence with the council

How you send the appeal in matters here, because it cannot be made through the online appeals service. You fill in a discontinuance notice appeal form and email it to the Planning Inspectorate, together with your documents. The form itself, and the address to send it to, are on the government guidance for appealing a discontinuance notice. If you have gone looking for this appeal on the online service and could not find it, that is why.

Your documents can go in as Word files, PDFs or photographs. Make sure nothing on them is blacked out or covered over, because the Inspectorate has to be able to read all of it.

The Secretary of State can allow the appeal, dismiss it, correct a defect, error or misdescription in the notice, or reverse or vary any part of it, including a part you did not appeal against. That last power can only be used where it will not cause injustice to you or to the council. The matter is then dealt with as though you had applied for express consent and been refused, for the reasons the council gave for taking action.

 

Displaying a sign without consent is a criminal offence

 

Where a sign is displayed in breach of the Regulations, there is no notice to receive and no planning appeal to make. It is a criminal offence, prosecuted in the magistrates’ court.

The penalty is a fine at level 4 on the standard scale, currently £2,500. That is a fixed ceiling set by law, which is worth knowing because several other planning offences now carry an unlimited fine instead. If the sign is still up after conviction, a further daily fine runs at one tenth of level 4 for every day the offence continues.

Keep the two routes apart in your head, because councils sometimes blur them in correspondence. Prosecution is for a sign that has no consent. A discontinuance notice is for a sign that does.

There is a third situation that is neither of these, and it is the most common one of all: you asked the council for consent and it said no. That is not an enforcement matter, and it has its own appeal on its own eight week deadline. Our guide to an advertisement consent appeal covers it.

 

Who can be prosecuted, and the defence

 

The net is cast wide. You are treated as displaying the advertisement if you are the owner or the occupier of the land it is on, or if the sign gives publicity to your goods, trade, business or other concerns. A business can therefore find itself prosecuted over a sign it never put up, on land it does not own.

There is a defence, and it is worth knowing precisely. If the only reason you have been caught is that you own or occupy the land, or that the sign publicises your business, you are not guilty if you prove either of two things: that the advertisement was displayed without your knowledge, or that you took all reasonable steps to stop it going up or, once it was up, to get it removed.

Two practical consequences follow. The burden sits on you, so the evidence needs to exist before you need it. And taking all reasonable steps means actually doing something, so a dated email asking for a sign to come down is worth far more than a recollection that you were unhappy about it.

 

How long the council has to bring a prosecution

 

Longer than you would expect, and this catches people out. The usual six month limit for a summary offence does not run from the day the sign went up. In England, proceedings can be brought within six months beginning with the date on which evidence sufficient, in the prosecutor’s opinion, to justify proceedings came to the prosecutor’s knowledge.

There is a long stop. No proceedings can be brought more than three years after the date the offence was committed.

The prosecutor can sign a certificate saying when it had enough evidence, and that certificate is treated as conclusive proof of that date. In practice that makes the starting point very hard to argue about.

The point to take away is that a sign which has been up for a year or two is not safe merely because nobody has complained. The clock starts when the council knows enough, not when you put the sign up.

 

How this differs from ordinary planning enforcement

 

If you have read our other enforcement pages, the differences are worth spelling out.

• there is no enforcement notice for the display of a sign, so there is no appeal ground asking for consent after the event
• the four and ten year rules on our page about enforcement time limits deal with breaches of planning control, which is a different thing again, so do not rely on them here
• an appeal against a discontinuance notice suspends it, which is not how a breach of condition notice or a stop notice works
• the council’s reasons are confined to amenity and public safety, a far narrower test than the ordinary planning balance

 

Is there a cost?

 

Nothing is charged for being served with a discontinuance notice, and no fee is charged for lodging the appeal against one. At appeal each side normally pays its own way, although an award of costs can be made where somebody has behaved unreasonably.

Costs arise in three other ways. Applying for express consent to keep the sign carries a fee at the ordinary rate for that type of application, set out in our guide to planning application fees. A conviction brings a fine, and usually the council’s costs on top. And professional advice is worth paying for where a sign is central to a business.

If the council refuses your application for express consent, that refusal carries an appeal to the Secretary of State, and our guide to planning appeals explains how appeals are run and what the current deadlines are. Note that the appeal system in England changed on 1 April 2026, and which regime applies turns on when the application was submitted.

 

Advertisement enforcement: what to do this week

 

• work out which class your sign is meant to fall inside, then measure it against the limits for that class on size, height, number and illumination
• photograph the sign as it stands today, with the date recorded
• if a discontinuance notice has landed, diary the date it takes effect and work backwards, because the appeal has to be in before then
• keep every letter and email with the council, since copies have to go in with any appeal
• if the sign is not yours but publicises your business, write and ask for it to come down, and keep the dated copy
• do not rely on the sign company alone, because the liability lands on the landowner and the occupier as well
• ask whether an application for express consent would simply end the argument

If you have had a letter about a sign and you are not sure which of these two routes you are on, you can reach us via here to help.

 

 

Advertisement enforcement: relevant legislation

The primary sources below are on legislation.gov.uk. Check the “Changes to Legislation” panel at the top of each page for any amendments not yet incorporated into the revised text.

• Control of Advertisements (England) Regulations 2007, regulation 3: powers to be used in the interests of amenity and public safety only
• Control of Advertisements (England) Regulations 2007, regulation 4: the requirement for express or deemed consent
• Control of Advertisements (England) Regulations 2007, regulation 6: the classes of advertisement that have consent already
• Control of Advertisements (England) Regulations 2007, regulation 8: the discontinuance notice, the substantial injury and danger test, and the eight week minimum
• Control of Advertisements (England) Regulations 2007, regulation 17: appeals to the Secretary of State, including the appeal against a discontinuance notice
• Control of Advertisements (England) Regulations 2007, Schedule 4 Part 5: how the appeal against a discontinuance notice actually works
• Control of Advertisements (England) Regulations 2007, regulation 30: the fine on conviction, and the daily fine for a continuing offence
• Town and Country Planning Act 1990, s224: the offence itself, who is treated as displaying an advertisement, the defence, and the time limits for prosecuting

Other Enforcement Sections

 

 

 

 

Advertisement enforcement Page Updated: 14th August 2026