Signage and dealing with DCC

smegmar

Hi all,

I'm a new starter upper, looking a premises in Dublin centre. and I want to know what I can do with signage. I have already gone straight to DCC planning office and asked. They directed me to some new planning regs that are written in backwards Spanish legalese. I can't say for sure that I understand it, I can't say how much I do understand at all. Basically I'm not sure and I don't want to get the hefty penalties for making a mistake.

Has anyone out there gone through it already? Can someone give me the layman's terms on what is and isn't allowed.

mrawkward

It will depend on a lot of different issues including location, your lease/landlord, existing permissions etc. Essentially, it will be property specific and you may need a design to assess whether PP is needed or not.

smegmar

Cheers, I knew it would be a massive headache from the start. Do you know anywhere I can go, other than DCC who can help and advise (even paid service) for my specific case in simpler language?

Bandara

On the flip side your signage is obviously very important and can depending on the business make or break you in the initial first few crucial months

We opened a new business this week and have no planning whatsoever for our sign, however it will take between 9 months to a year before we get the warning letters, drag them out, apply for retention, get refused permission (which we will), appeal the decision, get refused again and then eventually take the offending sign down and replace it with one that meets the guidelines.

Within that time the visability of the business on a very visable main artery in the city has been priceless and we couldn't get it thru 50k of advertising

And the offending sign has cost 3,000

Just another spin on it !

mrawkward

Bandara has one solution but he is being very deliberate in his objective and is prepared to suck up the costs involved, which in his case are worthwhile to him.
If you have a specific property and a signage design you want to use. Get it all down on paper, ask the local planner for a pre-planning meeting and run it by them. They will tell you what you need to know. Always a good play to ask them for their input as you do not wish/cant afford to have a refusal.

smegmar

SO Bandara are you saying it's that easy to just flaut the regulations and have the sign up for the guts of two years? Surely if they do take issue with the sign, and you lose your appeal there will be hefty fines. I heard they can be quite merciless, even for small deviations from the regs.
Do you know for sure you can get away with it? That would be so much better that dealing with

Bandara

I'm not telling you what to do as thats your call, however we have a HEAVILY illuminated sign with zero planning etc currently in place and theres no way it will be down within 9-12 months we feel. By then it will have paid for itself tenfold and more.

Case Study:

Panti Bar Sign on Capel street, smack bang in the middle of the city and about 400m from the DCC Offices!

Sign put up in March 2015.

August 2015 warnings received from DCC.

Planning retention permission was then applied for.

May 2016 Permission was refused

http://www.thejournal.ie/pantibliss-sign-2775549-May2016/
Permission to be now appealed.

Applicants have 4 weeks to appeal. They have appealed and case is going before An Bord Pleanala 'sometime in autumn'.

So if/when they are told to take it down they will have probably 30 days in which to comply. Which essentially brings them up to December most likely.

They put it up in March 2015 - Have to take it down in Dec 2016.

Worth every penny imo


ps. As an aside, if your premises has windows use them also, signage in windows is a very grey area and difficult to enforce as DCC have no appetite for it. You can get away with a lot.

By all means get legal advice etc. But in general imo dealing with councils is very easy. They are slow cumbersome and inefficient, and they don't actually really care. Good luck with the new business regardless !

smegmar

I'm more curious if we (and Pantibar) will receive a massive penalty fee when they lose their retention case. Surely the DCC can place fines for flauting the rules like that.

Bandara

smegmar wrote: »

I'm more curious if we (and Pantibar) will receive a massive penalty fee when they lose their retention case. Surely the DCC can place fines for flauting the rules like that.

Your not flaunting any rules, you put up a sign unaware it requires planning, you then apply for planning, you then appeal the decision, you then remove the sign when instructed to do so.

Your following DCC instructions at all time and engaging with them. Why would you be fined ?

paddylonglegs

The chances of you being fined is slim, so long as you have taken some sort of consideration for your surroundings. I.e, check out signage design on other premises near you. Maybe drop in and ask the business owner if they had any issues, complaints etc regarding their design. If there has been no issue then you would have a case that signage close by was similar - so you proceeded with an educated guess that it would be legal to proceed. Note, just because there might be an illuminated sign near you , it doesn't mean it's a free for all regarding illumination.

On one particular project, We had to redesign and reconstruct signage at the last minute which was already manufactured. Dcc rejected a face illuminated sign and allowed for a halo-lit sign (light projects out the back lighting the edges of sign and back wall). In this case, the lights were blue, the letters were 2 metres high, and it was beside an airport - hence a redesign of sign.

If you keep the illumination down to a minimum (consider using trough lights) , you will reduce attention from planning. But be mindful of what is surrounding you - any junctions etc which a sign may distract people.

Listen to your sign designer and make sure you have a full understanding of materials and construction methods, it makes for a better finish you will be happy with.

Best of luck.