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Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Lord): Order. We must move on to the next debate.
Street Furniture (Rural Areas)
1 pm
Mr. David Prior (North Norfolk): I start by apologising for the rather prosaic title of this Adjournment debate on the Order Paper: the impact of street furniture on the rural environment. By street furniture, I mean the whole clutter of signs, railings, bollards, concrete kerbing, street lights, telecommunication masts, concrete traffic islands, raised roundabouts and the like, which have migrated remorselessly from urban areas, where they may be acceptable, to the rural environment, where they are not. As the Council for the Protection of Rural England has remarked,
- "We must not abandon our rural landscape to death by a thousand cuts. It is not always the major attacks--the out-of-town shopping centres, the new dual carriageways--that do the most harm. The slow accretion of smaller alterations ultimately can be far more damaging."
I am not wearing the mantle of Mrs. Snell of "The Archers". I am not against change for the sake of it; I am rather in favour of progress and of some enlightenment. The battle against street furniture and clutter is not one for prohibition. No one argues that road signs or adverts should be banned altogether. One argues for sensibility, tact, and above all, good design. Good design defies contempt, no matter how familiar it becomes. Bad design, overkill and bad siting, not standardisation alone, is the enemy. One has only to compare a new BT telephone box with an old one, look at a line of orange concrete sodium lighting poles or see a telecom mast on top of a hill to know exactly what I mean. We need designs for the countryside, not for urban environments. We must safeguard our local idiosyncrasies and character; that is what makes our rural areas special.
I shall draw an analogy with agricultural practices. Not many years ago, farmers were being encouraged to rip up hedges, fill in ponds, burn stubble, implement drainage schemes and plough marshes. Intensive production was the name of the game, and huge damage was done to our countryside and wildlife. Today, the pendulum has well and truly swung the other way. For that change we have much to thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer) for.
We now have sites of special scientific interest and areas of outstanding natural beauty; places such as the Norfolk broads have national park status; new legislation protects hedgerows; we have environmentally sensitive areas and nitrate sensitive areas. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and the National
Trust have more members than all political parties combined. Most importantly, a massive countryside lobby is articulating the views of country people. Yet our highways and byways, which snake through our countryside--some 5,900 miles in Norfolk alone--seem almost completely unaffected. I shall cite four examples to illustrate my point.
The first example is the roadside verge. Road widening has destroyed many wide grass verges. Roadside hedges and trees have often been killed through damage to root structure and consequent water deprivation. There is no longer room for walkers, horses or cyclists to get off the road. Ironically, the widening and straightening of roads leads to faster driving, which calls for hazard warnings, white lines and speed restriction signs. Above all, country lanes have become less aesthetically pleasing. Experience tells us that, when new roads are built and old roads "improved", traffic expands to fill them.
The second example is roadside signs. Too many road signs damage the natural beauty of rural areas. One only has to drive down the A12 in Essex, with its flock of advertising boards, visit Stonehenge, with its melee of road signs, or enter any of the smaller rural towns in my constituency, with town name, speed limit and "please drive slowly" signs, and lights and road markings, to see the damage that has been done. Such over-signing distracts drivers or encourages drivers to ignore the signs. Our villages look increasingly urban. Am I the only one to feel cross at all the byroad signs strewn across the county? They are out of context in the local area and unnecessary.
As one of my constituents pointed out, such new monstrosities were designed
In Salthouse, a tiny coastal village in north Norfolk through which the coast road runs, there is an array of 58 highway signs and dozens of bollards in the space of a few hundred yards. In Sheringham, a lovely seaside town, one is greeted by a raised black and white roundabout surmounted by metal signs. There are numerous examples of grass roundabouts being concreted over, ugly concrete and metal railings around village ponds, and concrete flood pans over fords. They represent in aggregate all the paraphernalia of a people who seem not to care about or be in sympathy with the countryside.
The third example is lighting. There are increasingly few places in England where one can look up into the night sky to see stars in all their transcendental beauty without being suffused by an unwelcome orange glow, which emanates not just from towns but from more and more small towns and villages. What is worse, except perhaps electricity pylons, than columns of tall concrete posts, topped by orange overhead lights? The wonders of a starlit night are as important to many as the finest daytime view.
My fourth example, on which I shall be brief as I am straying from the subject of the debate, is telecommunication masts and electrical transformers. Those ubiquitous and ugly developments must be subject to full planning permission with more public consultation, and mast sharing must be enforced rigidly where possible. I therefore welcome Cellnet's attempt to improve the design of masts through its student design awards and the fact that it is keen to promote more mast sharing as well as notifying local authorities and holding public meetings before making planning applications. However, the order concerning general committed development needs to be revised to give local planning authorities the opportunity to consult properly on intrusive developments.
Mr. Lembit Öpik (Montgomeryshire):
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that light pollution, especially in the countryside, is becoming a serious problem, particularly for Britain's thriving amateur astronomy industry?
Mr. Prior:
I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman. I want to make a few specific recommendations to the Minister, one of which picks up the hon. Gentleman's point.
First, the Government should publish a best practice guide on the design and siting of street furniture. The emphasis should be on minimising clutter and maximising local distinctiveness. Perhaps county councils could run local competitions. I hope that the countryside traffic measures group sees that as an important part of its role.
Secondly, planning controls should be extended to include the impact, siting and design of lighting. Why cannot lighting be traditional in design, be at a lower height, shine downwards and be a natural white, rather than a suburban sodium orange? There should be a presumption against new lighting on all roads. Perhaps the Government and local authorities should consider designating and protecting special dark areas.
Thirdly, the traffic signs regulation orders governing the erection of road signs and their supporting poles and structures should be revised to restrict the number of signs and reduce their visual impact. The environmental impact should also be reduced. A code of best practice should be published to encourage highways authorities to review the environmental impact of their signing policies.
Fourthly, new ways should be sought to reduce traffic speeds with minimal visual intrusion. For example, local authorities should have the power to impose a uniform speed limit throughout a village--possibly as low as 20 mph. Small country lanes could also be designated as quiet lanes. That would be a new category of road, with a lower speed limit than the current national 60 mph on A and B roads.
Fifthly, traffic calming schemes should make use of existing or traditional rural features, such as hedges, walls and bends in the road. Road straightening and verge elimination should be a last resort. Perhaps new research could be commissioned on safety. It is becoming increasingly clear that over-signing and road straightening are not having the desired effect. Indeed, in some cases they are having the opposite effect, as repetition reduces impact.
Sixthly, national planning guidance on outdoor advertising should be revised to reduce visual impact. The areas of special control should be widened and the current proposal for relaxing advertising restrictions on local authorities should be dropped.
The Department of the Environment acknowledged the problem of clutter in its discussion paper in 1994, launching its quality in town and country initiative. The Department accepted that the
I also congratulate Derbyshire county council, which has published an environmental code of practice on highway signs with the aim of creating
I welcome the fact that the Minister of Transport understands that countryside clutter "provokes howls of displeasure", and is determined that traffic management schemes should meet environmental as well as transport objectives. However, we need action, not rhetoric, from the Government. We need a change in the psychology in the Department. The mindset of the Minister's officials must be changed. It is ludicrous that signs on the new Wymondham bypass in Norfolk have increased in size--and, of course, cost. I was depressed to note, as I drove along the A140 from Norwich to Ipswich last weekend, that bigger signs are in preparation.
The Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions should urgently review the size and design of all road signs and establish a presumption in favour of small, well-designed signs. My right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal started that change. There is a worry that the process has stalled. I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure us today.
I can do not better than to end almost where I started, by quoting from "Norfolk in Peril":
"for the benefit of a driver of a 7.5 tonne vehicle with 90 per cent. sight disability."
The painted aluminium street signs on metal posts are in stark contrast to the traditional white cast iron and wood finger signs. Some brown tourist signs have effectively become roadside billboards--a means of getting around the ban on roadside advertising.
"design and use of roads, the impact of parking, signs and roadside furniture all affect the quality of an area."
It went on:
"The Government wishes to encourage traffic management schemes which show great sensitivity to the impact of a street on the local environment. . . . Everyone has a part to play . . . and local people can help identify surplus signs that can be safely removed."
Some county councils are starting to recognise the importance of the issue. In December 1997, Norfolk county council published a booklet called "Highway Corridor", which states:
"In a county with a strong, rural character as Norfolk, roads are also an integral part of our perception of, and access to, the countryside. . . . The design of signing, kerbs, lighting and surfacing and realignments will all affect the appearance of the surrounding rural countryside as does the maintenance of roadside boundaries, trees and verges."
I strongly welcome the nascent co-operation of the Norfolk Society and the county council in the design process. I congratulate the county council on reverting to finger signposts in several instances.
"a safe and well-managed highway while causing the minimum visual damage to the environment."
That has to be a step in the right direction, but we cannot rely on a few forward-thinking councils. Central Government need to set an example and bring pressure to bear on councils and the Highways Agency.
"One of Norfolk's greatest treasures has always been its remarkable network of ancient lanes and roads with their often narrow and winding routes; beautiful hedgerows and wild flowers;
18 Mar 1998 : Column 1258unspoiled verges and sheltering trees; the old discreet white direction signs; grass verged walkways and lack of urban concrete kerbs; and their unlighted beauty in a wonderful countryscape.
These lanes and roads are the envy of the world. They are relatively unique as they follow, in some cases, very ancient rights of way. Their hedges and verges have been the home to a wonderful and varied wildlife. Their very narrowness and winding nature have served during this age of faster modes of transport to keep vehicles at low speeds. Thus have the wildlife thrived and these ancient ways have, in their own way, created a calming influence on those that might otherwise be tempted to speed through the countryside but simply cannot because of these beautiful in-built and meandering natural designs for traffic calming."
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