Adfree Cities calls for urgent reform of OOH industry and ‘unsightly’ billboards

Campaign group Adfree Cities is calling for the urgent reform of planning regulations around ‘unsightly’ billboards following its research on outdoor advertising and inequality.

Released yesterday, the report – titled Unavoidable Impact – revealed that outdoor advertising is disproportionately placed in areas of higher deprivation, lower income and higher air pollution levels, with 80% of UK billboards located in the poorest areas.

Adfree Cities campaigner James Ward told Marketing Beat that the findings are a symptom of the wider “inequality embedded in our society”.

The research highlighted that areas with the lowest levels of disposable income were home to 62,953 OOH ads, compared with just 13,384 in more affluent areas.

The campaign group is calling on people to sign a petition telling MPs to reform planning regulations for billboards, and is today (5 March) taking the report to parliament.

“The planning system is stacked in favour of advertising companies who have the time and the resources to submit multiple planning applications for new ads and re-apply for those that have been refused,” Ward said.

“Only wholesale changes to planning regulations can help stem the tide by restoring power to communities and local councils to say no to new proposals. We need national policymakers to understand the extent of the problem and to act on the recommendations laid out in the report”.

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He added that as Adfree Cities analysed roadside ads, it wasn’t surprising that these were also located in areas with “higher pollution levels”.

Ward continued: “Our point is to challenge the circular logic of the advertising industry whereby building new ad sites in already polluted areas is justified by the fact that those areas are already polluted, or, in the language of planning, are of ‘low amenity’.

“In other words there is a tacit acceptance by the OOH ad industry that billboards and other OOH are unsightly and unpopular, but whereas the ad industry uses this as justification to place ads in areas that are already polluted – be that air pollution, noise pollution or visual pollution – and already facing reduced social capital by virtue of low incomes and underinvestment, our position is that such neighbourhoods ought to be the last places to install new advertisements as to do so is to compound existing inequalities.”