A COURT has put the brake on a car dealer's illegal roadside advertising.

Judge John Bailey was told Darren Metcalfe's unauthorised signs were literally verging on the dangerous.

Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council yesterday successfully applied to Middlesbrough County Court for a permanent injunction banning the 32-year-old and his firm, Cars at Trade Prices, from roadside advertising.

The court heard that on five separate occasions over the past 18 months council officials removed as many as 20 signs from the verges of the A174 between Saltburn and Greystones roundabout.

Mr Metcalfe, whose business in based in Marske, east Cleveland, was ordered to pay £224.55p - the cost of removing the signs - and the council's costs of £1,375.25p.

He said: "I will have to eat humble pie and pay up. But all I am trying to do is make ends meet. I am paying an annual rates bill of £20,000-plus to the council on three sites, 16 members of staff, phenomenal wages and rates."

Mr Metcalfe said the car market was currently "absolutely chronic. All we were doing was advertising a bit more aggressively than we should have."

The council told the court that the signs, lightly fixed with wooden stakes, were a distraction to drivers and "potentially hazardous".