Today Conservative MPs Steve Baker, Anne Main, Julian Smith and myself have published Poles Apart – ‘how to get rid of a million useless road signs’, a pamphlet drawing attention to the visual blight and waste of public money caused by pointless and unnecessary road signs. Poles Apart builds on the prior work of the Minister of State for International Development Alan Duncan MP and describes the problems of unnecessary and useless signs before promoting a series of new rules to curb them and a Big Society empowerment to help local residents tackle the issue in their own areas. Across the country Councils and other organisations have blighted our roads, towns, cities and countryside with unnecessary and expensive signs. The claim that they must have a sign every 10 feet because the law and regulations tell them to simply isn’t true. This pamphlet is our attempt to clarify the situation and suggest some solutions. At the heart of our solution is the public. Identifying problem signage and getting something done about it is the Big Society in Action, but Officers often fail to respond to issues the public raise. Or they blame tight budget for being unable to do anything about it, whilst wasting money erecting yet more unnecessary signs elsewhere. This has to change and we hope that this pamphlet will be the catalyst to do just that. We have singled out over 15 types of signs as predominately unnecessary and overused and lay the blame for the issue at the door of a number of organisations including the Highways Agency, Local Councils, Highways contractors, Transport for London, BAA and other airport operators, service and petrol stations and even supermarket chains. We can solve this problem though if we just follow a series of simple rules which would significantly improve the look of our roads and importantly save money and energy. The simple rules include positioning signs correctly, only illuminating signs when they need to be, ensuring that new signs aren’t installed in front of old, not replicating signs where they aren’t needed, stopping pole tops from protruding and considering height and symmetry. We’ve also suggested that sanctions of between £250 and £500 should be put in place for Councils that fail to adhere to these rules and to respond to complaints from residents. The pamphlet concludes with this: “Councils’ decisions about whether and where to place road signs is one of the most deficient and incompetent areas of government. Their subsequent lack of responsiveness to local complaints compounds that disgrace. The result is hundreds of thousands of useless, unnecessary, expensive and ugly road signs which councils do nothing to remove or improve. “The time has come to force them to take action. Localism and the Big Society, together, should empower citizens to demand councils meet higher standards of aesthetics and administrative competence. We urge the Secretaries of State for Transport and Local Government to work together to make this happens.” Click here to download the full pamphlet