A-boards a menace

I HAVE much sympathy with your visually-impaired correspondent writing in last week's Observer about the A-board menace.

I, as I wrote a few weeks back, use a power chair and before that a scooter and find the A-boards quite an obstruction in places: if you are not in a hurry they make the basis for an obstacle race!

To be more serious though, a couple of weeks back I remonstrated with an assistant from a charity shop in North Street where a board took up almost half a narrow footpath and made passing with pedestrians difficult.

I was told they had council permission.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

I phoned the district council and they could not confirm this either way.

It is illegal to block a public footpath.

I can see the reason for displaying these boards is to draw attention to the shop as you walk down the road.

The name above a shop is not discernible until you reach it.

My answer, and I know it has been frowned upon in the past, is for every shop to have a hanging sign that can be read when approaching from a distance.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

The sign would be hung from a horizontal rod and be of a uniform shape, decided by a competition, and having each shop’s easily-recognised signage or name and be in landscape mode so as not to look too much like a pub sign.

These could be complemented by a list of shops in places like Crane Street as already proposed.

What do other readers think?

Exeter Road, Chichester