The saga of our hotel sign continues and it has now been over a year since the council decided to object to our hotel signage....this is regardless of the fact that the sign is exactly the same size as the original and in exactly the same place as the one that advertised our predecessor.
The Planning Enforcement Officer suggested that council would prefer 18 individual letters to be drilled into our front wall so that passers by might catch a glimpse of the sills (and the drainpipe) which lies underneath.
The Conservation Officer preferred two small signs in order to identify the hotel as two buildings – so ‘da Vinci’ on one side and ‘eastbourne’ on the other....I dismissed his suggestion as aesthetically unacceptable.
Then the new Conservation Officer suggested we remove the word ‘eastbourne’ since it was obvious that it was Eastbourne....I am surprised to learn that we are now being discouraged from using the town’s name in our signage.
We received a curt letter from the Planning Support Services requesting further information including detailed scale drawings, three copies of an Ordnance Survey plan, a Design and Access statement and a Waste Management Plan – you could not make this up.
So I have decided enough is enough and resubmitted plans based on the exact same sign that we already have in place. It seems that the worse that can happen is that the whole lot is rejected and by the time I have exhausted a few appeals, I shall have enough money to buy a new sign.
