ADVERTISERS have been told they must take down four billboards from a busy Winsford roundabout if they want to install a new electronic one – or drivers could get distracted.

Gloucestershire-based firm Insite Poster Properties wants to install an electronic billboard to replace the regular one on the side of Guyz n Dolls Hair Studio in Wharton Road.

The billboard is the furthest right of five in a row at the roundabout where Wharton Road meets Kingsway.

Cheshire West and Chester Council rejected the plans, but the firm had that decision overturned at appeal – provided it also removes the four billboards to the left.

Insite Poster Properties now wants to keep two of the billboards furthest to the left and install the digital billboard – but CWAC insists all four must go to stop drivers being distracted.

In its decision notice, CWAC’s planning department said the ‘scale, siting and cumulative impact’ of the two old billboards close to the new LED one would ‘materially increase the level of distraction’.

It said: “That would result in an unacceptable detrimental effect on pubic safety and on the use and operation of all forms of transport, including the safety of pedestrians.”

CWAC also says that keeping the two billboards furthest to the left, while removing the two in the middle and swapping the one on the right for an LED billboard, would ‘result in a cluttered appearance’ that would harm ‘the character of the area’.

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When allowing the digital display at appeal in September 2017, the Planning Inspectorate said that having the one digital display ‘would be less distracting than the five existing for these drivers’.