[2025] UKUT 00006 (LC)

The Manchester bus shelter is on Piccadilly within the city centre. I was told it was a ‘bus shelter of the future’, having a ‘green’ roof, Wi-Fi hotspots, and areas both to sit and to stand at raised tables. The advertising sign in question is on the southern end of the bus shelter. It is a two-sided back to back digital display, each side of approximately 1.8m tall by 1.2m wide, a size long known in the industry as ‘6-sheets’, a phrase dating back to the days when signs were made up from a number of smaller sheets.

The Sheffield bus shelter is more modest, being on the northern outskirts of the city centre on Brightside Lane, a fairly main road into the city. The sign is on the south-western end of the shelter. When first brought into the rating list, it was valued as a double-sided 6-sheet display, but in fact the internal side, facing north-east into the shelter, is a digital display, whereas the outer face, facing south-west towards Sheffield, is a ‘static’ display.

There are three main types of 6-sheet displays. First there are ‘static’ displays, which are in backlit boxes, and which are manually changed periodically in the same way that traditional signs might be changed. Secondly, there are scrolling displays, also in a back-lit box, which contain 2 or 3 advertisements on a scroll, which can rotate, pausing on one advert before moving on. Thirdly, there are digital displays, of differing and one would suspect ever-evolving sophistication. The digital elements of the subject hereditaments are ‘standard’ digital billboards.