News / Digital advertising
Digital ad screen refused amid planning controversy
Permission to turn a billboard in the Eastgate area into a digital advertising screen has been refused by Bristol City Council.
There were 157 objections from residents and councillors to the instalment of the digital screen which would have shown six adverts per minute.
In rejecting the application made by Wildstone Estates, council planning officers also discovered there is no planning permission for the paper billboard currently in place.
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The report also notes the intended site, near Tesco and Narroways, is deemed an Important Open Space, identified as a Focus Area for Nature Recovery by the West of England Combined Authority and defined as a Wildlife Corridor.
The planning application proposed these two paper billboards in the BS5 area – which, as it turns out, do not have planning permission – should be turned into digital screens, showing six ads per minute
The win is being celebrated by Adblock Bristol, an organisation that campaigns against intrusive corporate advertising in Bristol and has managed to block 150 digital ad screens including 40 giant screens, comparable to billboards or larger, since 2019.
Their long community-led campaign against billboards in St Werburgh’s has resulted in nine of 13 billboards being removed in the last 20 years.
They say corporate advertising invades public space, drives health and planet-damaging consumerism, allows companies to misinform the public, and ‘undermines local resilience’.
Digital screens use huge amounts of energy and have been shown to harm health, sleep, pride in place and wildlife.
Adblock Bristol, the precursor to the Adfree Cities movement, was founded in 2017 and has blocked 150 digital ad screens since 2019, leading councillor Rob Bryher to state: “I can’t name a more effective lobbying organisation in Bristol,” calling their work “crucial” – photo: Adblock Bristol
“We welcome the council’s decision to reject this new digital ad screen and hope the existing billboards that do not have planning permission will also be removed,” said Robbie Gillett, the organisation’s co-founder who lives close to the proposed site in Eastgate.
“We call on Bristol MPs to strengthen our outdated national planning laws in Parliament to better protect neighbourhoods and the environment from intrusive digital ad screens.
“We want to create thriving, public spaces free from the pressures of corporate advertising and its messages of hyper-consumerism.”
Robbie Gillett spoke out against digital ad harms and corporate misinformation at an Adblock Bristol event earlier this year – photo: Ursula Billington
A proposal for a new digital ad screen on Feeder Road has also recently been rejected.
Campaigners are opposing further planning applications for a new digital billboard at 85 Church Road, St George which is currently at committee stage, and six three-metre high ‘BT Street Hub’ advertising units which have already been rejected twice by the council in 2018 and 2024 following mass public objection.
Main photo: Adblock Bristol
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