Motorway Advertising – can you put an advert by a motorway?

Drive any motorway in England and you will pass them: an old lorry trailer sitting in a field, signage painted on the side or items on top, grass growing round the wheels. The belief behind them is simple: put the advert on wheels and the planning rules do not apply. It is one of the most widely held misconceptions in planning, and it is wrong. Here is what the rules actually say, why a parked trailer falls outside the vehicle exemption, and why getting this wrong is a criminal offence rather than a slap on the wrist.

 

 

The short answer

Yes, you can advertise beside a motorway, but you almost certainly need advertisement consent to do it, and putting the sign on a trailer does not change that. If you display it without consent, you commit a criminal offence immediately. There is no warning letter and no chance to put it right first.

 

The motorway advertising myth

The reasoning goes like this: advertisement control applies to signs fixed to land or buildings, a trailer is a vehicle, vehicles are exempt, therefore an advert on a trailer needs no consent.

The first three steps are roughly right. The conclusion does not follow, because the exemption for vehicles is far narrower than almost anyone assumes.

 

What the vehicle exemption actually says

The Town and Country Planning (Control of Advertisements) (England) Regulations 2007 do exempt advertisements displayed on vehicles. But the exemption has two limbs, and you need both:

• the advertisement is displayed on or in a vehicle normally employed as a moving vehicle
• and the vehicle is not used principally for the display of advertisements

The myth only knows about the first. The second is the one that does the work.

The purpose is obvious once you see it. The exemption exists so a plumber can put his name on the side of his van, and a haulier can carry its livery on a lorry that spends its life on the road. It does not exist so that a trailer can be bought, parked and used as a hoarding.

So take a trailer that has sat in the same field for four months with a sign mounted on it. Is it normally employed as a moving vehicle? It has not moved. Is it used principally for the display of advertisements? It is doing nothing else. It fails both limbs, and it is not a close call.

 

Why “it’s a vehicle” does not save you

There is a second reason the wheels do not help, and it sits in the definition of “advertisement” itself.

Section 336 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 defines an advertisement to include any hoarding or similar structure used, designed or adapted for use, and crucially, anything else principally used, or designed or adapted principally for use, for the display of advertisements.

Read that last phrase again. It does not say “any structure”. It says anything else. The definition was drafted deliberately wide to catch exactly this sort of ingenuity.

The Act does not care what the thing is. It cares what the thing is for. A trailer whose principal purpose is carrying an advert is caught, whatever it has underneath.

 

Our view – permanence is what makes it provable

In our opinion, a trailer parked idle in a field for months has acquired a degree of permanence that puts it well beyond any sensible reading of the exemption. It is not parked. It is sited. The wheels are a legal fiction, not a fact about how the thing is used.

Respected planning law commentary goes further still. Martin Goodall has written that the Regulations “were never intended to permit (and do not have the effect of permitting) the current practice of stationing farm trailers or other vehicles in fields with advertisements on them, even on a purely temporary basis” , the argument being that a trailer put in a field to carry an advert is used principally for the display of advertisements from day one, and duration never comes into it.

We think both arguments are right. But the practical point is this: the longer it sits, the easier it is to prove. A trailer that has not moved since spring, photographed with grass grown up around the tyres, is not going to persuade anyone it is normally employed as a moving vehicle.

 

What about deemed consent?

Some advertisements have automatic consent under the Regulations, so no application is needed. It is worth knowing how narrow those classes are, because people assume they are wider.

The temporary advertisement classes cover things like the sale or letting of the property itself, the sale of goods or livestock on the land where they are situated, an advertisement of current building work on the land, and travelling circuses and fairs. Every one of them is tied to the land the sign stands on.

That is the pattern. Deemed consent lets you advertise what is happening on that land. It does not let you rent your field out as a billboard site for someone else’s product.

An advert for an unrelated business, on a trailer, in a field, beside a motorway is general outdoor advertising. It needs express consent, and it will be judged on the two tests that govern this whole regime: amenity and public safety. A large sign positioned to catch the eye of motorway traffic has a hill to climb on the second, quite apart from the first.

 

The land use question people forget

There is a further problem, and it has nothing to do with advertisement control.

Normally, displaying an advertisement in accordance with the Regulations carries deemed planning permission for the development involved, so you do not need both consents. But that only works where the display is in accordance with the Regulations. Where it is not, there is no deemed permission to fall back on.

Which raises the question of what the land is now being used for. A field used for agriculture is being used for agriculture. A field with a commercial hoarding stationed in it, earning rent, may well have undergone a material change of use, and that is development requiring planning permission in its own right. It depends on the facts: scale, duration, and how much of the site is involved. But the council has two lines of attack, not one.

 

The consequences – this is a criminal offence

This is the part that ought to change behaviour, and rarely does, because so few people know it.

Displaying an advertisement without the necessary consent is an offence under section 224 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. Unlike ordinary planning breaches, there is no enforcement notice first, no period to put it right, and no option to apply retrospectively and carry on in the meantime. It is immediately open to the council to prosecute in the magistrates’ court.

The penalty is a fine at level 4 on the standard scale, currently £2,500, with a further daily fine of up to one tenth of that amount for every day it continues.

Councils have practical powers too. They can remove or obliterate placards and posters, and they can remove and dispose of a display structure they consider is being used for illegal advertisements, having served a removal notice on whoever is responsible.

So the calculation the trailer advertiser thinks they are making (worst case, someone asks me to move it) is not the calculation the law offers.

 

If you want to advertise by a motorway, do it properly

• if the advert relates to what is happening on that land (a sale, a letting, building work, an event), check the deemed consent classes; you may already be covered
• if it is general advertising, apply for advertisement consent. Eight weeks, a fee, and a decision on amenity and public safety
• if you are refused, you have 8 weeks to appeal, one of the shortest deadlines in planning
• if you are a landowner being offered rent for a trailer in your field, understand what you are agreeing to. It is your land, and it may be your prosecution
• do not rely on the wheels

 

Thinking about signage more generally? See our guides to shop front alterations and flags and flagpoles, or the full picture on advertisement consent.

Relevant legislation

• Town and Country Planning Act 1990, section 336: the definition of “advertisement”
• Town and Country Planning (Control of Advertisements) (England) Regulations 2007: regulation 1(3) and Schedule 1 contain the vehicle exemption
• Town and Country Planning Act 1990, section 222: planning permission deemed granted, but only for a display in accordance with the Regulations
• Town and Country Planning Act 1990, section 224: the offence

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Motorway Advertising Page Updated: 9th August 2026