Brown Signs

Wednesday 27th April 2011 Westminster Hall

15:59

[Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. It is also a pleasure to have secured this debate. I am grateful to the Minister, who I have been corresponding regularly with on the topic of brown signs, for responding to it.

Brown signs, or more specifically white-on-brown signs, might not sound the sexiest or most modern topic for debate in this House, unlike high-speed rail or superfast broadband. Economically, however, brown signs are vital to attract tourists to our key destinations throughout the country. In the UK, 200,000 businesses are dedicated to tourism—

16:00

Sitting suspended for a Division in the House.

16:14

On resuming—

[Julian Smith]

Before the Division, I was speaking about the importance of the tourism industry to Britain. It represents £52 billion of our GDP and more than 4% of our jobs, and is one of the fastest growing sectors of our economy. For rural areas, such as the one I represent in north Yorkshire—Skipton and Ripon—tourism is a vital part of the economy, as it is for areas that colleagues here represent.

[Chris White (Warwick and Leamington) (Con)]

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for having secured this debate. In my constituency, we are very proud to host Warwick castle. It is a fantastic tourist attraction, but we have many other, smaller attractions that similarly lack exposure. Does my hon. Friend not agree that, although it is important to have rules that prevent too many signs from being put up, we should be prepared to relax those rules to allow other attractions the necessary promotion—such as brown signs—to boost tourism and support local economies?

[Julian Smith]

I agree wholeheartedly, and I will come on to that recommendation later. I requested this debate as a result of the many representations that I have received, first as a candidate and then as an MP, largely because of the upgrading of the A1 just north of Ripon. The upgrading has opened up a Pandora’s box of brown sign issues. People who had them under the guidance that was in place in the early 2000s are fighting to retain them under the new guidance that came in a few years ago. Newby hall, which is thought to be the real-life Downton abbey, got a big shock a couple of years ago when its sign was removed during an upgrade, and it has had to fight hard for a replacement. It has been waiting several months now for confirmation that it will get a permanent new brown sign. The hall is one of the north of England’s most successful visitor attractions and stately homes.

[Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

I urge my hon. Friend to urge the Minister not to fall into the trap in which we seem to find ourselves in Wales, where this issue is devolved. There, McDonald’s has a brown sign in Haverford West, but the wonderful Slebech park in my constituency cannot, for some reason, obtain one.

[Julian Smith]

That is another excellent point, from a colleague who also represents a rural area.

Ripon cathedral, in my constituency, had a brown sign with the old A1, but with the new A1(M) it has to disaggregate its visitors into religious and tourist ones and no longer qualifies for a sign. Lightwater Valley, a theme park near Ripon, has been told that it cannot have a brown sign on an A road directing travellers up the A1(M), just in case cyclists get confused and start to travel up the motorway.

[Karl MᶜCartney (Lincoln) (Con)]

I have written to the Minister on this point. He might know that Lincoln is not a million miles from the A1 either, but it is yet to have any brown signs pointing from that road to the city’s plethora of attractions, including its cathedral, the castle, various galleries and the Magna Carta, of which there are not many copies in this country.

[Julian Smith]

I am sure that travellers down the A1 would visit Yorkshire first, before Lincoln, but my hon. Friend makes a very good point.

[Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con)]

I rise to express my concern that this problem exists not just in rural areas but in coastal towns. If someone were travelling along the A380, they would not know that Newton Abbot, my constituency, existed. Brown signs to highlight the cattle market in St Leonard’s tower would be welcome, but they are notable by their absence.

[Julian Smith]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, and again, as long as tourists come through Yorkshire first, I am sure that the Minister will encourage them towards the coasts.

The town of Masham in my constituency has lost six directional signs off the A1(M) and is desperately trying to get a brown sign to replace them. This is a stunning part of the world, with Wallace and Gromit, Wensleydale cheese, James Herriot and the Black Sheep and Theakston’s breweries, together with many small inns, hotels and bed and breakfasts.

Local tourism relies largely on the traffic coming from the A1—the soon to be A1(M). Flo Grainger, who leads the “Keep Masham on the Map” campaign and runs the Old Station café, has described the double whammy that businesses in the area have received from both the recession and the Highways Agency policy on brown signs. We have been told time and again that it is just not possible to have a sign for a market town without that town having a specific tourism site that will attract 200,000 visitors a year or 40,000 in a given month. It is not even possible to have a brown sign denoting a well-known area—a generic label—such as the Yorkshire dales or Wensleydale, and yet recent visitor surveys by Welcome to Yorkshire have shown that the top concern of visitors to my constituency, and to north Yorkshire as a whole, is the lack of good signage.

My first question to the Minister is a specific one. Why has the upgrade of the A1(M) forced so many businesses to chase the Highways Agency for clarity on such a vital aspect of their business? Why am I, as their MP, having to hassle the Highways Agency to support the micro-businesses creating the jobs and wealth that we desperately need? The machinery of the Highways Agency and the regulations under which it operates do not seem to be on the same wavelength as the reality on the ground. The A1 upgrade has raised lots of questions about Whitehall’s responsiveness to small business and the Government’s policy on brown signs.

There are some positive indicators. A recent Department for Culture, Media and Sport tourism policy paper stated that brown signs had come in for a lot of criticism and that the Highways Agency would be asked to work much more closely with the Minister with responsibility for tourism to consider how they can be improved. I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to ensure that he works closely with the Tourism Minister on the issue.

Fundamental issues are at stake. Yet again, Labour’s decade of disrespect for the countryside is being demonstrated. Why are rural areas—and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) said, coastal areas—subject to the same visitor number rules as our country’s major towns and cities? Many tourism attractions in north Yorkshire and the other English rural areas represented by my colleagues here cannot attract a footfall of 200,000 a year or 40,000 in a given month. We must relax the rules and make special exemptions for rural areas. Why cannot our major market towns or areas such as the Yorkshire dales be given signs if they can attract good aggregate visitor numbers? Why can they not be recognised as areas of note? Not every pub or village should get a brown sign, but more judgment should be used for our rural areas. Rural England has lots of quirky, small visitor attractions that will never draw enough visitors for a brown sign, whatever the rules are, but if we could help them with brown signs to the general destination, it would make a major difference.

Brown signs should be seen as an opportunity to draw visitors to an area. A recent letter to me from a Liberal Democrat Minister in the Department for Transport said that brown signs

“should only be used where they will benefit road users, particularly those seeking a pre-selected destination that might require additional guidance in the latter stages of their journey.”

I believe that we should change the raison d’être of brown signs. Between 11% and 16% of visitors to rural areas decide what to do based on chance rather than deciding before they leave home. Seducing people to our major tourist areas should surely be part of the review of how and why we use brown signs. Brown signs should be the passionate signposts to England’s green and pleasant land.

The question of how the Highways Agency treats businesses needs addressing. I urge the Minister to set up a much clearer structure within the Highways Agency that involves individuals who understand business and will ensure that applications for brown signs are much shorter, sharper and swifter. The Treasury should also be involved. Tourist businesses are open about the fact that brown signs have value. Relaxing the rules a bit would provide an opportunity for a little income. While our economy remains in intensive care, we need to work with every industry to take immediate action to help. Better brown sign policy would make a difference to the tourist industry.

Will the Minister ask the Highways Agency to address the concerns of my constituents in Ripon, Masham and beyond? Will he ensure that visitor number targets for brown signs are lowered in rural areas? Will he consider relaxing the regulations, opening them up to include general areas of note and taking a more discretionary approach to the rules on brown signs? Brown signs are a practical and low-cost way for the Department for Transport to assist the Government’s growth agenda. I hope that the Minister can assure me that brown signs will be at the top of his in-tray before the summer recess, and that soon thereafter he will join me in Masham for a pint of Theakston or Black Sheep bitter.

16:25

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mike Penning)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson, and to speak in this debate, which affects nearly every constituency in the country. That is why so many hon. Members are here for a half-hour debate. I am conscious that I need to take up my time. I should be okay.

I am a Minister at the Department for Transport, but I have been corresponding with Ministers about this issue since I came here in 2005. I have the wonderful Ashridge management college in my constituency, in the fantastic Ashridge forest. I highlight that because everybody else seems to have highlighted something in their constituency, and it seems apt for me to do so as well. By the way, it is possible to get to Yorkshire, especially north Yorkshire, by going through Hertfordshire, although that is not a sensible thing to do. The reason I corresponded with Ministers about this issue is that brown signs involve a bureaucratic mess. Previous Ministers from various parties have wrestled with the conundrum of how best to inform the public and motorists without causing a hindrance on the road network. I am responsible for strategic road networks, so that is what I will be discussing.

My hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon (Julian Smith) mentioned the correspondence that he received from my coalition colleague, the Minister with responsibility for local transport, the hon. Member for Lewes (Norman Baker). The Minister was obviously referring to the policy agreed by Ministers in 2003 and inherited by us; the problem has been going on for a considerable time. The letter to my hon. Friend was factually correct when it described the role of a sign. We see the role of a sign in more common-sense terms.

The Department has been engaged for some time in a traffic signs policy review. Believe it or not, it has been going on for years, but it will come to fruition soon, and a report will come to Transport Ministers in May. That is not really what we are discussing today, though; it has more to do with clutter on the roadside and ensuring that our beautiful countryside is not scattered with poles and signs, some of which are completely irrelevant. Some were probably fine post-war, but are not useful at all these days. Different agencies also put up signs on different poles instead of on the same one.

I have been the Minister responsible for the strategic road network for nearly a year now, and during that time I have considered whether the Department for Transport and I as the Minister could issue common-sense guidance to the Highways Agency that could be replicated around the country so that local authorities and businesses could understand exactly what we want from a road sign. If we stick rigidly to the guidance from 2003, we will not get that. We know that to be the case.

Since becoming a Minister, I have had interesting debates with officials, particularly at the Highways Agency, involving the word “why”. Why cannot Warwick castle have a sign indicating that it is off the A1? Why, when a huge investment was made in the M1 in Bedfordshire, was no sign for Centre Parcs allowed, when that development was a multi-million-pound project to which people from all over the country will go? I hope that it is successful, but there is no sign for it.

Motorway services companies came to me asking, “Why can’t we say what’s in our services instead of just saying ‘Motorway service station’? Why can’t we say, for instance, ‘Costa Coffee’ or ‘McDonald’s’ or point out the different choices?”

What we have done in the past couple of months is deregulate that. As the Minister with responsibility for deregulation in the Department for Transport, I have started to use, I hope, a common-sense approach. For instance, if someone now drives down a motorway, they should be able to know whether a service station has a—I will get into trouble with all the companies that I do not name—Costa Coffee, Starbucks, Pret a Manger or Marks and Spencer. I have tried very hard to make sure that it is not a case of why we cannot do it; it should be a case of how we can do it, particularly with brown signs.

Colleagues touched on an issue when they said that they have a plethora of different historic places, monuments and facilities in their constituencies. Lincoln is a classic example. I know Lincoln fairly well from my military days. How many brown signs should be put on the road side and the strategic road network to indicate what is in Lincoln? I think that the answer is to have a sign indicating that Lincoln is an historic city. That is the way in which it needs to be done. There is, however, a tradition within the Department, based on previous legislation—civil servants do what they are told based on the legislation and the rules that they are given—which means that the issue is difficult for them, unless we review it carefully and work together.

Colleagues have touched on tourism. I was pleased to receive yesterday a letter from the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose), who is responsible for tourism and heritage, reminding me of a meeting we had and of our agreement that the

“Highways Agency will work with DCMS and other interested parties to ensure its approach best reflects the needs of drivers and gives the industry a helping hand at the same time.”

That pragmatic approach is brand new and cross-departmental, and we are working on it. The working group of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the Highways Agency and VisitEngland officials is due to meet for the first time on 16 May. We will discuss not how we can restrict, but how we can best promote safe roads, informative signs and tourism throughout the United Kingdom.

I know that I do not speak for the whole nation, because a lot of the powers are devolved, particularly in Wales, as my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) has mentioned. If people are not careful, they will miss what they are looking to do and advertise something that is not a tourism site, but a straightforward business. There is sometimes a grey area between the two. What constitutes tourism? Is it an area of outstanding natural beauty, a world heritage site, or are we talking about a business that employs lots of people locally and that would like to be promoted by a brown sign? I think that what we will get from the meetings is a definitive position on what the brown sign is. Will it be where we started with the 2003 legislation? No, it will not. It will be a relatively new and pragmatic approach for England, and I hope that the devolved Assemblies and other parts of the country will look carefully at how they opened Pandora’s box without thinking through carefully how it could be done.

It is important that we do not just stick to a mantra. I shall quote something that was going to be in my speech. I am not being derogatory in any way to my officials. The speech asked me to mention “TA 93/04 Traffic Signs to Tourist Attractions and Facilities in England—General Introduction”. If colleagues want to read that, it is available on the Department website, but it will make them none the wiser—to touch on what has been said—about how we will work better with local businesses and local authorities in particular, so that we do not dictate to them, but work with them.

It will be difficult to balance what should and should not be advertised. I use the word “advertising,” but my officials and I are not technically supposed to do that. The legislation needs to be tweaked, so that we can carefully work through what constitutes promoting road safety—in other words, giving people an option to get off nice and early, so that they know where they are going—and what constitutes impulse tourism, which is something that I have done for most of my life, especially since my kids came along. I want to go somewhere and they see somewhere else, but we end up going somewhere completely different. That is what impulse tourism is about. If someone is in one of the beautiful parts of the country represented by colleagues present, that is part and parcel of what goes on.

I was in Cornwall the other day, and for the first time in many years, I was being driven. I went to Cornwall many times on holiday as a young man and when I was in the military and always drove. It is a completely different county if one is being driven, because one can see some completely different things. I saw signs, advertisements and tourist attractions that I did not even know existed when I had visited previously. I had an excellent time. It is about how we manage this. It is a big change, after years of a review of road signage to look at how we make sure that strategic road network signage works.

Colleagues have talked about specific areas. My hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon was worried about certain aspects of what happened after the road improvement on the A1. That was based on new guidance that was introduced after the initial signs were put in, so when the new road improvements went through, the new criteria were met. I am sure that my hon. Friend was pleased with the road improvements on the A1. If not, I could mention other parts of the A1 north of Newcastle where people are screaming for me to address their part of the world, as is the case in other parts of the country. I accept that, sometimes, if things have been there for several years—many years in some cases—and new road improvements are made, all of a sudden the question is, “Where are my signs?”

I accept that there have been delays, but I hope that issues about particular road signs have been addressed. I am informed that several road signs were removed after the Dishforth to Leeming works were done. In accordance with TD52/04—that is what officials are still working to—the tourist attractions affected were invited to re-apply, apart from Ripon cathedral, which was accepted without re-applying. If there was a delay for Ripon cathedral, I do not understand how that was the case and perhaps my hon. Friend and I can correspond on that again. The cost of re-signing was part of the actual project cost.

I apologise—I have misread. We may need to correspond on what happened with Ripon, because it says here that the Ripon sign had insufficient justification, which is probably what my hon. Friend was alluding to earlier. That does not make any sense to me.

I argue that, if we are talking about tourism and historic sites, a sign on the A64 that reads “Farmer’s Cart/York Golf Range” would probably not, these days, fit the criteria of an area of outstanding natural beauty, a world heritage site, or a site such as Ripon cathedral. That is the sort of thing where we have to be careful with the balance.

The numbers game that the Department plays with the legislation is another grey area. If a certain number of people go to Newton Abbot for the races or for the beautiful coastline, why should it be designated as a problem if the numbers are taken from a particularly bad summer? I hope that that does not happen and that the tourism industry does fantastically well, as it has over the Easter weekend. I do not understand why, if we have fixed criteria, one area of outstanding natural beauty is not as great as another simply because the numbers do not go there. A lot of that is to do with the weather and our wonderful climate in this country.

I think that we can work together and that the Highways Agency is learning fast, with the new Administration under a coalition Government, that it is not about why we cannot do something, but about how we can do it. I met my officials this morning to discuss several brown signs that are not in areas represented by any colleagues present, but those issues need to be resolved quickly. There is no logic as to why those signs could not be used.

To sum up, are things being done? Yes, they are. Do I accept that the Highways Agency needs to work more efficiently and be more responsive to local authorities and businesses? Yes, but there are myriad different communication routes to the Highways Agency. I ask colleagues, particularly in local authorities, to try to channel their applications through a single route, if possible. That would make it much easier for the local authority to be supportive of the brown sign of a local business or tourism attraction. Singing from one hymn sheet tends to achieve a more cohesive approach.

Over the next couple of months, I will keep a very close eye on exactly how the Highways Agency responds and how the new working relationship with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Tourism Minister works. If the two Ministers have agreed to work closely together to promote tourism in the United Kingdom, it is absolutely crucial that the civil servants behind that mechanism listen to what Ministers have been saying and take action.

At the same time—I am going to make a rod for my own back here—if there are individual attractions, areas of outstanding natural beauty, world heritage sites or anything else that colleagues think should have a brown sign, I will be more than happy to listen to delegations of colleagues from across the House to discuss how we can promote the UK. We are coming out of a difficult financial situation that we have inherited. No matter what the Government do with cuts and how careful we are with taxpayers’ money, growth is the way forward. Tourism has to be part of that growth and anything that my Department and my officials can do to help to promote growth in tourism will get my backing.