THE LONG-RUNNING row over the purge by councils of shopkeepers' A-board pavement signs was cranked up today as Blackburn with Darwen Council issued summonses against five businesses which refused to remove theirs.

But while it is true that local government may have the law on its side as it wages war on street clutter, despite being guilty of creating so much itself, one fact is apparent.

And that is that the Highways Act which councils in East Lancashire have begun to police with strange and sudden zeal was never intended to put people out of business or on the dole.

Yet that is what it stands to do if this over-prescriptive and unfair crackdown by councils is kept up.

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