Hoardings.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 20083, 12 November 1930, Page 10

Hoardings.

| The City Council wrestled with the hoarding' question again oil Monday night -without settling it, and arranged for another bout at the next meeting. If members at last weary themselves into taking the plain and safe decision which will save their time and satisfy the great majority of citizens, i these repeated discussions will have | served a good purpose; but it is surprising that the Council has not seen I and followed the right course long before now. In 1926 it achieved a policy, laying down principles which were at least better than no principles at all or than the wrong ones which regard hoardings as a roadside art gallery and approve of putting exhibits everywhere; but in practice the policy meant very little, as the trouble about the Ferry road-Oak street boarding most recently shows. The By-laws Committee is left with too much power to decide what are residential areas and what are not, and to authorise the erection of a hoarding before members of the Council and the people of the district realise what is proposed and what will be done. If the Council continues to think that it can draw a judicious line and license a hoarding here and refuse a license there, then obviously it must be much more careful to see that the committee's intentions are clearly understood by those whom they affect, and to understand them itself. At present there is not even a sketch of any system or procedure by which objections are sought or can be registered. Citizens interested are left to express and submit them as they please, and to take the chance of their being noted by the Council. The Council might very . well notify the local Burgesses' Association and other bodies, such as the Beautifying Association, when applications to drect hoardings are received; and it is the Council's duty to see that citizens can lodge objection without being put to the trouble and expense of arranging for petitions and public meetings. It should be remembered that the By-laws Committee reported on Monday night that applications had been received for licenses for five more hoardings, and that the committee may in a month's time authorise the erection of these hoardings unless sufficiently weighty and numerous objections have been received in the meantime. But the best conceivable plan to sow hoardings with discretion, even, if it were worked with the greatest care, would still be vexatious and still be dangerous. By all means the Council should try snch a plan, if it is not ready to say bluntly, No more hoardings; but sooner or later it must say that, and it would be wisest to say it now.