City Outdoor Media v Secretary of State: Court of Appeal confirms scope of inquiry for site-wide advertising discontinuance notices

The Court of Appeal has dismissed a challenge by a large-format digital advertising operator to the upholding of a discontinuance notice covering an entire site in Manchester, confirming that an inspector determining an appeal against such a notice is not required to evaluate all classes of deemed consent that may be affected, provided the appellant has not raised specific alternative advertisement types for consideration.

In City Outdoor Media Limited v Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government and Manchester City Council [2026] EWCA Civ 829, Lord Justice Dove, with whom Lord Justice Newey and Sir Nicholas Underhill agreed, dismissed the appeal and confirmed that the decision of the Court of Appeal in Putney Bridge Approach Limited v SSCLG [2019] PTSR 1431 applied to the facts, rejecting a submission that it had been wrongly decided.

City Outdoor Media operates large-format digital advertising screens across major UK cities. Its display on the Rochdale Road frontage of a Manchester car park had originally been granted express consent in 2013 as a large static Mega 96 hoarding. No removal condition was attached, with the result that deemed consent arose in 2018. The display was replaced in April 2021 with a digital screen of identical dimensions but with changing images.

Manchester City Council served a discontinuance notice under Regulation 8(1)(b) of the Town and Country Planning (Control of Advertisements) (England) Regulations 2007. Such a notice targets "the use of a particular site for the display of advertisements for which there is deemed consent" rather than a single specified display. The stated reasons were substantial injury to the amenity of the locality, with particular reference to the incongruity of the large digital structure against the backdrop of the regenerating Northern Gateway area and the newly completed Swan House development, a 31-storey residential scheme. The council's highway safety grounds were rejected by the inspector, who nonetheless dismissed the appeal against the notice on amenity grounds.

The appeal

City Outdoor Media argued that, because the notice was issued under Regulation 8(1)(b) and therefore removed deemed consent from the site as a whole, the inspector was obliged to evaluate whether it was necessary to discontinue each of the eight or more classes of deemed consent capable of applying to the site, not merely the digital display physically present at the time. The company further submitted that the effect of the notice was to render any future application for express consent practically hopeless, since the inspector's conclusions would necessarily carry substantial weight against any subsequent proposal. On that basis, the threshold of necessity within Regulation 8(1) required a broader inquiry than the inspector had undertaken. In the alternative, it was argued that Putney Bridge should be overturned.

Dove LJ rejected both grounds. He held that the statutory test in Regulation 8(1) is confined to whether it is necessary to serve the notice to remedy a substantial injury to the locality's amenity or a danger to the public. The regulation contains no express or implied obligation to assess the full range of hypothetical advertisements that might otherwise have attracted deemed consent. To read such a requirement into the provision would amount to an unwarranted gloss on language that is otherwise clear.

The court also disposed of the argument that a discontinuance notice would effectively foreclose any future application for express consent. Dove LJ reiterated the position established in Putney Bridge: a discontinuance notice operates only on deemed consent and does not prevent the submission of a fresh application for express consent in respect of any advertisement. The existence of a notice would be a material consideration in such an application but would not be determinative of it. A carefully tailored and modest proposal could succeed on its own merits.

The appellant had not placed before the inspector any material to suggest that alternative advertisement types or other classes of deemed consent could be displayed at the site without causing substantial injury. The court confirmed that it was open to an appellant to make such a case on an appeal against a Regulation 8(1)(b) notice, and that doing so might require the inspector to address specific classes in greater detail. The failure to advance that case was the appellant's own decision and could not be converted into a ground of legal challenge.

The court found no basis to depart from Putney Bridge under the principles in Young v Bristol Aeroplane Co Ltd [1944] KB 718, noting that none of the recognised exceptions to the rule of comity applied.

Gregory Jones KC and Charles Merrett (instructed by Addleshaw Goddard LLP) appeared for the appellant. Matthew Dale-Harris (instructed by Government Legal Department) appeared for the first respondent.