The Secretary of State for Transport, Patrick McLoughlin, has written today about ‘the blight that traffic signs can have on our rural and built urban environments’.

The Department for Transport has today published a new Traffic Signs Advisory document, ‘Reducing Sign Clutter’. This document provides advice for improving the streetscape and environment. It also recommends that traffic authorities create inventories of the signs on their roads and conduct regular signs audits to see what is no longer required. He gives examples of the ‘decluttering’ paying for itself through reduced maintenance and energy costs.

The Secretary of State promises a revised ‘Traffic Signs Regulations’ in 2014 that will provide Councils with far more discretion about where and when we can place traffic signs. He says some measures have already been taken over the last year like removing the requirement to place most regulatory signs on both sides of the road at the start of a restriction.