Cafe ordered to take down bright orange signs

The cafe installed new aluminium signs without planning permission

A cafe's vibrant orange signs must be taken down as they have significantly harmed the area, a council said.

Dash!, on the corner of Broadway West in Leigh, Essex, has been given six months to remove the signs after they were installed without planning permission.

Southend-on-Sea City Council’s development control committee unanimously agreed enforcement action after worries about the signs on the cafe, which is in a conservation area, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said.

Dash! applied to change its signs in December 2022 and July 2023, but both bids were rejected. It appealed to the Planning Inspectorate in February 2024, but the appeal was dismissed.

'It's like Piccadilly Circus'

Richard Longstaff, Green Party councillor for Leigh ward, said the cafe was located on "an incredibly busy junction and a focal point for the street scene".

"While I'm guilty of my daughter stopping for an ice cream at the hatch, it just seems to be in the way of everybody," he said.

"It’s a busy zebra crossing. There are people with pushchairs. It just seems incongruous and impractical to have people queuing at that hatch. It’s like Piccadilly Circus.

"We do need to maintain our conservation areas. If we don't enforce that it's just a slow creep, and all of a sudden we’ve lost the character of a place."

Carol Mulroney, Lib Dem councillor for Leigh ward, said the shop sat in a "really important point of the conservation area".

She added that the awnings made a "tremendous" difference.

The shop's declined planning applications were to install a new shopfront, and to retain its metal shopfront and awnings and install various moulded timber panels.