TSRGD 2016

The Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions 2016 (SI 2016/362).

TSRGD 2016 is the statutory instrument that prescribes the design and conditions of use of every traffic sign, road marking, signal and crossing in England, Scotland and Wales. A sign on a road the public uses must match a TSRGD design or be specially authorised.

Read on legislation.gov.uk

For signage and wayfinding

What it asks of your signs

01Any traffic sign on a highway or a road to which the public has access must be a prescribed TSRGD sign or carry a written authorisation from the national authority. Estate roads, campus roads and car parks open to the public can fall inside that test, so check before you design.
02Prescribed signs are copied from the DfT working drawings, never redrawn. Proportions, colours, borders, symbols and the lettering defined in Schedule 17 are fixed by law.
03Characters on prescribed signs follow the forms in Schedule 17, which the Traffic Signs Manual names the Transport alphabet (Transport Medium for light text on dark grounds, Transport Heavy for dark text on light grounds). Do not substitute your brand typeface on a regulatory or warning sign.
04A wayfinding scheme can sit alongside TSRGD signs, but a custom sign must never imitate a prescribed one. A brand-coloured triangle or roundel that reads as a warning or regulatory sign is the classic mistake.
05Directional signs are prescribed as building-block elements, so a bespoke-looking direction sign to a car park or site entrance can still be a compliant TSRGD sign if it is built from the Schedule 12 elements.
06In Wales, bilingual Welsh and English versions apply; in Scotland, TSRGD provides for Scottish Gaelic on certain signs. Northern Ireland has its own regulations.

What it is and where it applies

TSRGD 2016 was made on 16 March 2016 and came into force on 22 April 2016. It consolidated, with substantial changes, the Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions 2002 and several separate crossing and temporary sign instruments. Part 1 is the Traffic Signs Regulations 2016, which prescribe sign designs; Part 2 is the Traffic Signs General Directions 2016, which control how and where some of them are used. The Regulations extend to the whole of Great Britain. Northern Ireland is covered by the Traffic Signs Regulations (Northern Ireland) 1997, and Ireland by its own Road Traffic (Traffic Signs) Regulations.

The instrument is built around schedules: warning signs, regulatory signs, directional signs, road markings, signals and crossings each have their own schedule of sign tables, and Schedule 17 sets out the letters, numerals and characters. Most directional signs are now prescribed as elements that can be combined, rather than as fixed whole-sign diagrams.

Private land and public access

The DfT Traffic Signs Manual explains that traffic signs placed on a highway, or on a road to which the public has access (right of passage in Scotland), must be prescribed or specially authorised. The test turns on public access as well as on ownership. A hospital campus road, a retail park access road or a multi-storey car park may be privately owned and still open to the public. Whether a particular road meets the test is a legal question for the client and their advisers; your job is to flag it early and design so that any traffic sign on it is a correct TSRGD sign.

Where signs are plainly on private land with no public access, you have more freedom. Even then, using prescribed designs for the safety-critical messages (stop, give way, no entry, speed limits, height limits) keeps the meaning instantly readable to drivers.

Copy, never redraw

Traffic sign designs are part of legislation. The Traffic Signs Manual notes that UK sign designs are Crown copyright but can be reproduced freely because they form part of legislation. DfT publishes working drawings for TSRGD 2016 on GOV.UK, schedule by schedule, and the Welsh Government publishes bilingual working drawings. Build artwork from those drawings and the Traffic Signs Manual Chapter 7 rules for sign face design. The GOV.UK traffic sign image library is intended for media use, and DfT points traffic sign professionals to the working drawings instead.

Common mistakes on wayfinding schemes

Speed limit roundels in a brand typeface or with a non-prescribed number on a road open to the public.
Directional signs to car parks or entrances that borrow TSRGD colours (blue, green, brown) without following the rules for what those colours mean.
Redrawing a sign from a photograph or image library file instead of the working drawing, which drifts the border, symbol and letter spacing.
Mounting heights, sizes and x-heights chosen for pedestrian wayfinding and applied to signs that must be read by drivers.

Editions and history

Replaced the Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions 2002 (SI 2002/3113). Amended by, among others, the Traffic Signs (Amendment) (England and Wales) Regulations and General Directions 2017 (SI 2017/1086), the Traffic Signs Amendment (Scotland) Regulations and General Directions 2018 (SSI 2018/161) and 2022 (SSI 2022/111), the Electric Scooter Trials and Traffic Signs (Coronavirus) Regulations and General Directions 2020 (SI 2020/663), the Traffic Signs (Coronavirus) (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2021 (SI 2021/75), the Private Crossings (Signs and Barriers) Regulations 2023 (SI 2023/1112), and the Traffic Signs (Amendment) (Wales) Regulations and General Directions 2023 (SI 2023/783 (W.)) and 2026 (SI 2026/35 (W.)). Several development consent orders also make local modifications.

Sources checked

A summary in our own words, checked on 16 October 2026. It is not the document itself and not legal advice.

Equivalents and related

The same ground, elsewhere.

Working to TSRGD 2016 on a live project?

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