SIGNS put up by Bradford Council at its main customer service centre have been installed without permission, it has emerged.

The revelation came only days after the chairman of a Council planning panel warned that she would take a dim view of those using retrospective planning applications.

The new signage has been installed at Britannia House in Bradford city centre as part of a revamp of the customer services centre facing on to Broadway.

But advertising consent has not yet been granted for the five signs and ten vinyl window panels, with the Council's planning department only due to made a decision by October 1.

The Council's application for advertising consent for the signs was lodged last month.

In the application form, the applicant, Council staff member Kevin Foulstone, said the authority had sought pre-application advice from planners, who "saw no problems with proposals for the building, which stands in a conservation area".

Last Wednesday, Councillor Doreen Lee (Lab, Keighley East), who now chairs the Bradford Area Planning Panel, had given a stern warning to "the whole of Bradford" that she would not tolerate those who developed first and sought permission later.

She said: "If you think you can flout the law of this land, it ain't going to happen."

Many other panel members had agreed, with alternate panel member Councillor Malcolm Sykes, (Con, Thornton and Allerton) saying he was "sick to the back teeth" of retrospective applications coming before them.

Yesterday, Cllr Lee said she was not in a position to be able to comment on the Council's application.

And Cllr Sykes said he was more concerned about instances of people knowingly building "great big extensions" without permission than putting up unauthorised signs.

But he also said the Council had a responsibility to set a good example.

He said: "How can the Council expect people to follow the rules when it's not following them itself?"

A spokesman for Bradford Council said: “The application for the signs at Britannia House is for express advertising consent, not a planning application for physical building works and the like, which is the issue that concerned the councillors on the Bradford Area Planning Panel.

“There have been no objections to the small window signs which, because they were for internal display, did not need any consent at all.

“However, due to a technical difficulty, some of the vinyl had to be applied to the exterior of the windows, instead of the interior, which requires express advertisement consent.

“The concerns of Planning Panel members have no connection to minor technicalities of this kind. We recognise the frustration caused by retrospective planning applications but this is not the case in this instance.”

It is not the first time Bradford Council has applied for planning permission retrospectively.

Last year, the authority faced criticism after storing construction waste on an area of Council-owned land at Parry Lane, off Bowling Back Lane, before planning permission had been granted.

The waste had been created after the Council removed its city-centre urban garden from the Broadway shopping centre site as construction work began.

At the time, a spokesman for the Council said the situation was "regrettable", but storing the materials there was reducing delay to the scheme as well as saving the Council £120,000 by not sending the materials to landfill.