Joburg a step closer to a better outdoor advertising industry

07 July 2017

 

The City of Johannesburg is at present consolidating all the comments and inputs made during the recent public participation process on the draft outdoor advertising by-laws recently approved by the council.

 

The consolidation of the comments and views of the stakeholders in the multibillion-rand industry will result in the compilation of the final version of the draft by-laws to be submitted to the council for final approval in the coming weeks.

It is estimated that 78% of all outdoor advertising in Johannesburg is illegal, costing the City millions of rands in lost revenue and putting the safety of residents at risk.

It had for a long time been felt that the by-laws currently in force were not stringent enough to curb illegal outdoor advertising practices in Johannesburg, resulting in the council approving new draft by-laws that, among other measures, provide for the arrest and imprisonment of directors or owners of non-compliant companies.

For two weeks in June, the City’s Development Planning Department and the Johannesburg Property Company (JPC) hosted a number of public engagement sessions in all the City’s seven regions to solicit comments and views from media companies and other stakeholders on the approved draft by-laws.

The engagement sessions culminated in an outdoor advertising indaba attended by more than 600 stakeholders at the Johannesburg Country Club in Auckland Park on Wednesday June 28.

“It was clear that the outdoor advertising industry wanted to change,” said Member of the Mayoral Committee for Development Planning Cllr Funzela Ngobeni.

He said the public was concerned about illegal frames, the mushrooming of illegal signs, the lack of transformation in the industry and the risk posed by illegal signs, posters and billboards to communities.

“It came out loud and clear that to meet these challenges head-on, the City must consolidate the capacity to remove all the illegal signs and persuade the industry to voluntarily regulate itself,” MMC Ngobeni said.

He said through the new by-laws, the City aimed to reduce the number of illegal signs, billboards and posters and help the R30-billion industry realise maximum value on approved signs.

However, outdoor advertising companies said the City was making it difficult for them to operate as delays in the approval of applications were crippling their businesses, leading to many of them losing clients and shedding jobs. They also raised their concern with the way the City was regulating the industry.