Hoardings.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 20095, 26 November 1930, Page 10

Hoardings.

Although the City Council's purpose in amending the resolutions of 1926 on Monday night was to obtain a freer hand in dealing with applications for licenses to build hoardings, it is not very easy to see how it has freed itself. It ia still, and rightly, pledged

against hoarding's in residential areas; but the new clause, substituted for one which instructed the By-laws Committee to decide and recommend, does not simplify the question of what is and what is not a residential area. The effect of the change appears to be that the Council, in future, and not the Committee, will deal with applications "on their merits.'' But whether the Council means to be more sensitive or less sensitive to public objections against new hoardings in business areas did not appear at all. What citizens would have liked to hear was an assurance that no application will be granted before they have a reasonable opportunity to make objection. Few people knew anything about the Ferry road hoarding, i'or example, before it was up; and the Council should be careful to avoid any similar sui--prise when it deals with the applications deferred a fortnight ago. It should not only be prepared to hear find weigh objections; they should be invited and facilitated. If the Council is not yet ready to adopt Cr. Beanland's suggestion and allow no more hoardings, it should pay the fullest possible consideration, short of that, to public opinion, which has set more and more strongly against them. A freer hand might be used with better or with worse judgment-, as remains to be seen; but neither the Council nor the public will ever be quite safe from trouble and bad blunders until the line is drawn hard and fast.