Road sign prank in parts of Caithness criticised as 'ill-advised and misguided'

A prank which resulted in road signs being swapped around in parts of Caithness at the weekend has been criticised as "ill-advised and misguided".

The incidents took place in Castletown, Bower, Dunnet and East Mey with other signs understood to have been removed at Poolhoy and Gillock.

The road signs at Castletown were removed and replaced with ones from Bowermadden. "The only Castletown sign left was the one at Tansfield on the Wick road. The entrance sign to Dunnet was also gone as was the Brough sign coming to Brough from Ham," a community councillor said.

"At East Mey, the Brough sign was added to the East Mey sign. There was no sign at the top of the Wester/Hoy road while the sign for Poolhoy and Gillock was found in the plantation in Castletown."

The community councillor praised Highland Council staff who did "a great job putting some of the signs back in their rightful places and looking for others that are lost or damaged".

Thurso and Northwest Caithness councillor Matthew Reiss, a retired senior police officer, said: "This prank is not funny and is a criminal offence. It is also very confusing for tourists to the area. It is important the road signs are correct."

Councillor Reiss praised the council's roads department for its quick response in fixing the problem but said: "They are hard at work patching up the roads but had to be taken away from that work to put the signs back. It is taking them away from the job everybody wants them to be doing."

Iain Gregory, the co-founder of Caithness Roads Recovery and another former senior police officer, said: "It is a prank of some sort but is resulting in the hard-pressed council workers having to put the signs back again. They have enough to do.

"This is an ill-advised and misguided thing to do and could cause confusion and difficulty to people unfamiliar with the area. It is not helpful. This must have been done by one or two very busy people or a number of people," said Mr Gregory.

A Highland Council spokesman said: "The local roads operations manager has confirmed that the team became aware of this issue on Monday morning with a number of road signs either being turned to face the wrong way or moved to the wrong location, for example, Bowermadden moved to Castletown.

"It is understood that this took place over the course of the weekend, with the team working quickly to rectify these as they become aware of them."

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