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).
If the previous tenants are anything to go by, he'll be gone within a week or two..
How long until it is boarded up again with some bemused looking bloke standing outside in overalls with a paintbrush?
If the flashing lights are a temporary measure to get peoples attention so they notice that a new business has opened, then I guess I can live with that but I can't bear the thought of it being permanent. The gold paint is bad enough.
The sign does need planning permission.
Camden is looking into it
what is it with new businesses not giving a sh*t about blending into the village in which they operate. plenty of examples recently including the relocated motorcycle shop up near Fortune Green – not only did they put up obscene graffiti on their garage doors but they also have terrible commercial signs above the shop on the outer walls of the 1st floor residential flats. plus they use clutter the sidewalk with motorcycles and use parking bays to park more cycles.
presumably i’m not the only one who finds this trend disturbing. can camden (or the NDF) do anything about this?
In this particular case, the council is now aware of it and will be following up. I’m waiting to get an update on their timeframe. Challenge of lots of this stuff is that Camden doesn’t have enough planning enforcement officers, and there are much bigger issues in the borough to deal with. This doesn’t help us however, and “infringement creep” isn’t a good thing. The best you can do is complain to your councillors and make sure you follow up with them. Such things do take a while to play out though.
Totally agree…
West Hampstead Life – any thoughts re what we can do as concerned residents? or does the market need to play out?