It’s a recurring nightmare familiar to every motorist. Drive through almost any town or city in this country and you are almost guaranteed to be greeted by an explosion of road signs.

Long gone are the days of the 1960s when signage was strictly limited to warnings about speed, no entry, one way systems and roundabouts.

In the intervening years, surprise surprise, as Governments cosied up to the EU and embraced universal European standards, council highways authorities found it necessary to approve a weird and wonderful collection of incomprehensible signs.

Partly, this is the result of a natural inclination by local and national government to tell people what they cannot do. Very few of the signs cluttering our streets invite motorists to take any kind of positive action.

Let us hope that the campaign to cut back on road sign clutter, being led by Stratford-upon-Avon MP Nadhim Zahawi, gets Government support.

He is right to make the point, at a time of severe public spending cutbacks, that unnecessary signs are a waste of money, as well as an aesthetic and visual disaster.

As to giving residents powers to get rid of signs, this is perhaps not quite what David Cameron had in mind with his Big Society initiative. Not a bad idea though.