'Britain's Ocean City' - Plymouth pioneers visitor welcome sign

Plymouth has become the first city in the country to use a new style of welcome sign on its key routes into the city, featuring a large, full-colour picture of a local, iconic landmark.

The new signs were unveiled today and now drivers entering Plymouth on the A38 will be welcomed by the image of Plymouth Hoe, showing Smeaton’s Tower against a backdrop of Plymouth Sound.

The three-metre by four-metre signs located near the Tamar Bridge and the Deep Lane junction read ‘Welcome to Plymouth – Britain’s Ocean City’ to reflect the city’s updated branding, which aims to promote Plymouth’s role as a major maritime city with global connections. They replace the ‘Spirit of Discovery’ signs that were installed at the city boundaries around 20 years ago.

‘Britain’s Ocean City’ celebrates Plymouth’s unique seafaring and maritime heritage, as well as its future aspirations for positioning the city on the global stage. The brand development work, commissioned on behalf of Destination Plymouth, evolves previous city branding work and provides Plymouth with a more powerful message that will help attract visitors and investors from around the world.

Council Leader Tudor Evans said: “I’m really pleased that Plymouth is leading the way nationally with these brand new signs. Replacing the old, outdated signs was one of the 100 pledges we made when taking control of the Council and these will provide a much better welcome to the city.

“We want to shout about what Plymouth has on offer and I’m really excited about the opportunities that this stronger ‘Britain’s Ocean City’ brand will help to create. This is about Plymouth showing a greater confidence in who we are and really raising our national and international profile.

“Every piece of work that has been carried out over the years promotes Plymouth’s location by the sea and its incredible maritime heritage. Britain’s Ocean City builds on this. It’s strong, it’s confident and it’s a fact. The new visitor guide for Plymouth also promotes the Britain’s Ocean City message and I’m looking forward to seeing how this important work progresses over the coming weeks.”

The Rt Hon Hugh Robertson MP, Minister for Sport and Tourism, said: “I am delighted that Plymouth is today unveiling a new and exciting boundary sign for the city. This is one way that Plymouth can increase its profile as a visitor destination, and attract increased numbers of tourists to the area.”

Duncan Currall, Chair of Destination Plymouth, said: “It is important that we provide really prominent signage at points of entry into Plymouth and this is just the start of our drive to rapidly increase the number of visitors into the city. There are hugely exciting plans ahead for Plymouth, with some fantastic new events in the pipeline as we move towards Mayflower 2020.”

The new welcome signs were developed in conjunction with Rennicks MTS and manufactured by Nordis Signs using special retroreflective sheeting. Rennicks MTS specialise in pioneering traffic sign technology and the new signs have been designed to meet the DfT’s stringent specifications for signs on the road network.

David Skinner, Key Accounts Director at Rennicks said: “We were delighted to be part of this exciting project and offer our knowledge and technical expertise to deliver a solution which is not only attractive but also functional whilst meeting the visual and appearance standards required by the DfT.

“Rennicks MTS look forward to seeing the results of this economic growth initiative over the coming months and are sure that other regions will want to get involved when they see the positive impact created by Plymouth leading the way.”