Pensioner travels around the UK for sixteen years changing road signs showing metric measurements

Derek Norman co-founds Active Resistance to Metrication, a campaign group which believes distance signs should be in miles and yards

Active Resistance to Metrication believe road signs must legally be written in miles and yards (file photo) (iStock)

A pensioner has spent the last 16 years travelling all over the UK altering road signs that are in metres.

Derek Norman co-founded Active Resistance to Metrication, a campaign group which believes distance signs should be in miles and yards.

The 82-year-old, who supported Brexit, is thought to have changed or removed nearly 2,000 road signs to date that show metric measurements.

The retired electrical engineer started his campaign 16 years ago and says he hopes the referendum result will bring back imperial measurements.

“I’m 82 now and when I go out to the signs I hold the ladder and pass up the stickers because at my age my sense of balance is not so good.

“It is part of our tradition and heritage. I don’t see why you shouldn’t be able to buy a pound of cherries or a piece of steak,” Mr Norman told the Cambridge News.

“As an electrical engineer I was quite happy to use metric units for physics, chemistry or science but I do not see why they should make our everyday life metric.

“I think it is a question of freedom of choice to use what we want,” he added.

Mr Noman also said there are sign spotters all over the country that give him information and that a court case had ruled signs had to be in miles and yards.

“There are some in Scotland but we haven’t got a lot of money at the moment and it depends on how much money we have as to whether we would be able to do them.”