The signs were fitted by Infrastructure’s parking control department on a German bunker close to the end of the pier. In normal circumstances such signs do not require a planning application. However, as the historic structure is a listed building, an application should have been submitted. An eagle-eyed JEP reader contacted the newsdesk and a call was made to Planning’s policy director, Kevin Pilley, to clarify the situation.
He said: ‘When you are dealing with a listed building you need to make a planning application so effectively the signs have been put up without authorisation.’
Mr Pilley alerted the department’s enforcement team, who, having checked the signs, contacted Infrastructure to ask that they be removed. By the next day they had come down.
A spokeswoman for Infrastructure said: ‘We put up the signs to assist with the enforcement of problem parking in the area.
‘They were originally put up on the bunker wall because it is obviously easier and cost-effective to attach signs to an existing wall and avoided the need for a new signage pole.
‘We were unaware at the time that the bunker was a listed building, but once we were told, we took down the signs straight away.’
