DESIGN AND ACCESS STATEMENT
This Design and Access Statement is submitted to accompany an application for express advert consent for a temporary ‘scaffold shroud’ screen advertisement at the former Scala cinema building at Kings Cross whilst the frontage is scaffolded during refurbishment works to the building.
Express advert consent was granted on 19 September 2014 for a temporary period of 12 months for a scaffold shroud screen advertisement (y ref 2014/5584/A) from 15 November 2014 to 15 November 2015.
The building works and associated working scaffold were delayed and the consent could not be implemented and consequently a further express consent was granted on 19 December 2014 (y ref 2014/7588/A) again for a period of 12 months but commencing 1 April 2015 – 1 April 2016.
Both consents were for fixed dates.
Unfortunately, the building works and associated working scaffold have been delayed further and so implementation of this consent for the scaffold shroud cannot go ahead until these pre-requisites occur. 
The applicant has now been given a likely start date within the next 6 months although the exact start date is still not known at this point. So that the applicant can attain the full 12 month period of the original grant of consent (without this being eaten into) this application seeks a fresh consent for a temporary period of 12 months with a more flexible start date allowed by the 2007 Advertisement Regulations which addresses this type of situation.
In order that this advert consent has some inbuilt flexibility on its commencement date to accommodate this uncertainty of start time please could you consider attaching the following two legitimate conditions to any consent granted. These are embodied in Regulation 14(8) of the 2007 Advertisement Regulations and are being imposed by advert appeal Inspectors on  recent appeal decisions which I attach for your information, as follows,
•	“The express consent hereby granted shall begin on the date of the erection of the scaffold safety screen or by not later than 6 months from the date of this decision, whichever is the earlier.”
•	“Written notice shall be given to the Council of the date of erection of the safety scaffold shroud within 7 days of that erection.”
This would avoid the need for repeat applications due to uncertainty of the scaffold start date, and allow the shroud to be erected on commencement of the scaffolding any time within 6 months of the consent and the consent period accordingly to run from the date of commencement and not the actual decision date.
The maximum allowable flexibility is a commencement within 6 months of any consent, and the Town and Country Planning (Control of Advertisements) (England) Regulations 2007 does refer to this in Regulation 14(8) as the appeal Inspector refers.
The appeal decisions attached confirm this, and the Inspector explains this in para 13 when he discusses the conditions, as follows,
“In addition to the standard conditions the appellant has recommended two non-standard ones. The first would see the temporary grant of consent run from the erection of the scaffold. Regulation 14(8) of the Regulations enables consent to be granted on whichever is the earlier of (a) the date of the commencement of the display and (b) a specified date not later than 6 months after the date on which consent is granted. Given some uncertainty about when the display will commence, and to ensure that it is clear when the consent expires, a modified condition is being imposed, along with another requiring that written notice shall be given to the Council of the date of the erection of the advertisement shroud.”
There are no changes to the details of the consents previously granted only the commencement date variation.