Will flashing sign be allowed to remain?

The small unit between Benham & Reeves and the Nisa corner shop has been everything from a kebab shop to a… er… kebab shop over recent years. Apart from a brief stint as a cake shop. Over the past few days it’s been repainted gold, and the word on the street was “Lebanese café”, which I’m afraid I took to mean “kebab shop”, possibly very unfairly.

This evening its name was revealed: Adam’s Grill.

Who Adam is and what he’ll be grilling remain to be seen. What is seen all too clearly is the flashing multicolour sign that’s gone up projecting from the side of the shopfront.

A cursory glance at Camden’s planning database suggests that Adam (or the people behind him – I suspect he’s just a figurehead) may not have applied for the necessary planning permission for this sign. I wouldn’t normally be that bothered about such council pedantry, except this sign is awful. It’s the illumination that puts it in contravention of the rules and that I suspect won’t be tolerated for long. If you want to read all the information about when you do and don’t need planning permission for signs, be my guest (page 19 is the relevant one).