How, if at all, can we solve the terrace house parking problem?

[cybertect]

Seems I'm a little behind the times... it was decriminalised in February (along with parking fines, etc) and is subject to a Fixed Penalty Notice, at least within Greater London.

£80 FPN in LB Hillingdon for obstructing a dropped kerb

Outside London, I believe it's up to each local authority whether they choose to decriminalise obstruction in this manner.

http://www.walsall.gov.uk/index/parking_on_the_highway.htm

At present enforcement rests with the police but under the provisions of the Road Traffic Act 1991 Local Authorities can apply to take over the enforcement of parking offences with parking attendants employed by the Council issuing Penalty Charge Notices. Walsall MBC will be pursuing this course of action in due course but at present enforcement is still firmly under the jurisdiction of the Police.

e2a The logic follows from the fact that the dropped kerb constitutes part of the Highway. While the resident pays for and application and the entire cost of construction to local authority standards, the council own and maintain it as part of the road/pavement.

Costs will probably be closer to £500-£1000 (depending on how large a crossing is to be installed) plus an additional a council fee of between £75 and £200 depending on where you live

 

[Cobbles]

Terraced housing? Think yourself lucky. In Glasgow and Edinburgh lots of places are four storey tenements, eight in the close. That means really tight on-street parking. best thing the Council can do is to require parking permits and restrict to one per household.

So how is that fair? I live in a street where most houses have been chopped up into flats. I've got 2 flats on one side and 3 on the other - why should I be allowed just one permit when properties with an identical footprint get twice or three times the allocation just because there's 3 surnames on the front door?

 

[trashpony]

Just so you know, if they have a dropped kerb and you block their access, you could be charged with Obstruction of the Highway.



A dropped kerb will usually be about 2.5 metres wide (Birmingham standardise at 2.75m, LB Hillingdon 2.44m, LB Lambeth 2.4m).

Even if you're driving a Smart Car (2.5m long) that makes it considerably smaller than the equivalent space taken up by the length of a parked car. For comparison, a New Mini is 3.6m long, the BMW 3-series (currently the best-selling car in the UK is a little over 4.5m and a Toyota Prius 4.45m.

The additional manoeuvring space required to get in and out of a parallel parking space (typically 1.5 - 2m even with skilled parking) is also potentially freed up for use.



I'd suggest that one of the reasons why people want to park their cars off-street is that it can make a significant difference to the cost of car insurance, especially in areas that are deemed by insurance companies as high risk.

Parking in front gardens does a disservice to the visual amenity, though.

Where I live, the reasons people want to park in their front gardens is to avoid the resident parking permit charge. The neighbours two doors down have recently paved over their front garden to convert it into a parking space. Which the actual length of the dropped kerb may only be 2.5m wide, the actual area that is now a yellow line and was resident parking held two cars, meaning that we have effectively lost three spaces as the area on one side is now too big for one car but not big enough for two.

My concerns are largely environmental however - see here for an article on the detrimental impact of paving front gardens.

 

[fortyplus]

Part of the solution is in the planning departments. Some councils make permission for new developments conditional on parking restrictions and building to avoid car dependency.

For flat conversions, it should be a condition of planning permission that occupiers of newly-converted flats aren't entitled to residents' permits; and unconverted properties should be limited to one permit per house.

 

[Cobbles]

Part of the solution is in the planning departments. Some councils make permission for new developments conditional on parking restrictions and building to avoid car dependency.

For flat conversions, it should be a condition of planning permission that occupiers of newly-converted flats aren't entitled to residents' permits; and unconverted properties should be limited to one permit per house.

Where's the fun in that. let Local authorities flog as many permits as they want, correctly renaming them Parking Lottery Tickets.

 

[Crispy]

If three flats are in one house, they can all join a car club and share a single car. Hell, the whole street could share one or two cars. This assumes that there is half-decent public transport of course

 

[Errol's son]

Build lots of underground car parks.

 

[girasol]

park the car on the roof?

Nice big ramp in front of the house, sorted!

That'll increase the value of your house too, because it'll look very post-modern.

 

[cybertect]

[ponders shared ownership concept and then the proliferation of Fixed Penalty Notice offences, etc. that are payable by the registered keeper]

 

[Isambard]

Turn large areas of the inner city into 100% payable for onstreet parking, with permits for local residents. My local council is introducing it and says that it actually increases the availability of parking for residents by about 15% becasue vistors to the area use public transport more.

 

[Cobbles]

Turn large areas of the inner city into 100% payable for onstreet parking, with permits for local residents. My local council is introducing it and says that it actually increases the availability of parking for residents by about 15% becasue vistors to the area use public transport more.

If the area is currently open for free parking then the 15% concept is utter drivel as there generally aren't any commuters around at night when most people want to park.

The only beneficiary is the Council who'll charge an arm and a leg (as opposed to the actual administrative cost - £20-30?) for a permit that only allows you to park on exactly the same streets as you used to before you had to pay.

 

[Isambard]

If the area is currently open for free parking then the 15% concept is utter drivel as there generally aren't any commuters around at night when most people want to park.

The beneficiary will be me being able to walk aling my street becasue there will be less cars parked on pavements, less cars blocking crossings, less cars triple parked on the roads.

The big problem for residents is parking at night as we get a lot of people driving across town to go out in the area. As these people will be paying summat like 50p an hour to park in future the idea is that a lot of them will come on the bus instead freeing up parking spaces.

Anyway, most of my neighbours DON'T have cars and that goes for a lot of inner city dwellers. Why should we get wound up about there not being enough on street parking for multi car households? Boo frigging hoo!

 

[UnderOpenSky]

Stop building new houses and flats without enough parking! You can understand older areasm, but when they build new they should take it into consideration.

Lots of underground car parks where we can leave them when we're using this much better public transport that needs to come.

 

[Wolveryeti]

Sell your arse.

 

[User 301X/5.1]

I think the only long term solutions are massive demolition and rebuilding of urban areas (pretty unfeasable really) or a total culture change in the way society behaves, how/where we work, go, live etc.

I doubt it will change really and the poor situation will just be another part of the economic system. These houses will always be cheaper than similar houses with parking.

 

[Radar]

Stop building new houses and flats without enough parking! You can understand older areasm, but when they build new they should take it into consideration.

Tower Hamlets have been doing something like this for a while with their on-street parking permits. When planning permission is granted for a new development within the borough, a decision is taken at that stage as to whether it's classed as a "Car Free Development" or not. The council will tell you where to go if you try to buy a permit while living in a Car Free Development.

This only works if you're living in a CPZ (Controlled parking zone), otherwise I think there would be unrestricted on-street parking somewhere, which scrwes up the whole plan.

 

[Giles]

I find it ridiculous that some councils actually refuse someone wanting to build a block of apartments permission to put in an underground car-park. Thereby making the parking problems on the surrounding streets worse when the cost of putting a car park in the basement of a new block is pretty small when you are building it.

Especially since the building will be there for decades, by which time the pollution problem may well be solved by fuel cells, electric cars etc etc.

Maybe people should all buy Smart cars, thereby drastically increasing the number of car parking spaces.

Giles..

 

[Isambard]

My local council only give planning permission for new housing where these is provision for parking. But there's an argument against that t that it makes housing more expensive by either taking more land or meaning underground garages. As opposed to the other option: People living without a car.

 

[Giles]

My local council only give planning permission for new housing where these is provision for parking. But there's an argument against that t that it makes housing more expensive by either taking more land or meaning underground garages. As opposed to the other option: People living without a car.

But a lot of people want cars, and it is stupid of the council to allow buildings with no parking - it will just make life harder and more stressful for everyone in the area for years to come!

Giles..

 

[Radar]

But a lot of people want cars, and it is stupid of the council to allow buildings with no parking - it will just make life harder and more stressful for everyone in the area for years to come!

Giles..

Why is it stupid if it enables cheaper property to be built?

A buyers search will discover the restriction, and any landlord should make it clear before renting (yeah, right ) If you go ahead and occupy on these terms, don't go whinging later on. It was built like that to be suitable for a particular subset of the community, one that doesn't need their 4 wheeled security blanket.

It's this sort of logic that continues the state of affairs where key low waged workers can't live in the areas they work in. If you're in a nurses flat round the back of the royal london, with a 5 min walk to work, I doubt you'd need a car or even miss one.

I'm in a private flat complex in Wapping, with secured off street parking. There's so many grasping mini Rachmanns here that have bought to let, we had a major problem with obstructive parking for donkey's years. Finally this autumn parking restrictions came in, buy to let owners had been blocking them as long as they could as they knew it would affect their rental incomes. When the conplex was built there was one dedcated space for each property. Of course when flats are sublet, this sort of planning falls by the wayside.

The annoying thing is, many of the cars are only used once in a blue moon anyhow. FFS just sell the bastard car, and rent one whenever you need one.

 

[Giles]

Why is it stupid if it enables cheaper property to be built?

A buyers search will discover the restriction, and any landlord should make it clear before renting (yeah, right ) If you go ahead and occupy on these terms, don't go whinging later on. It was built like that to be suitable for a particular subset of the community, one that doesn't need their 4 wheeled security blanket.

It's this sort of logic that continues the state of affairs where key low waged workers can't live in the areas they work in. If you're in a nurses flat round the back of the royal london, with a 5 min walk to work, I doubt you'd need a car or even miss one.

I'm in a private flat complex in Wapping, with secured off street parking. There's so many grasping mini Rachmanns here that have bought to let, we had a major problem with obstructive parking for donkey's years. Finally this autumn parking restrictions came in, buy to let owners had been blocking them as long as they could as they knew it would affect their rental incomes. When the conplex was built there was one dedcated space for each property. Of course when flats are sublet, this sort of planning falls by the wayside.

The annoying thing is, many of the cars are only used once in a blue moon anyhow. FFS just sell the bastard car, and rent one whenever you need one.

I was talking about them putting underground car parking in new blocks. This doesn't really lessen the amount of flats in the block.

You are clearly starting from the preconception that people shouldn't have cars at all.

True, not everyone has or needs one. I just remarked that I have seen planning apps where the developer wanted to make a basement car park (so no loss of flats) and the council would not have it. This is very short-sighted, since it WILL at some point in the future increase the hassle for all the residents in nearby streets.

When you complain about "buy to let" owners complaining because parking restrictions "would affect their rental incomes", what you are actually saying is that parking restrictions will put a significant chunk of the population off renting there (because they need somewhere to park their cars).

Giles..

 

[detective-boy]

My neighbours are obsessed about parking outside their houses

I don't know why, but people get exceptionally het-up about parking. It's one of the most common reason for neighbour disputes, in my experience.

In my street in nice leafy, semi-detached suburbia, most (if not all) the houses have garages in a rear service road. The house frontages are each about one and a half or two cars wide on average. The vast majority of houses are occupied by a single family. There's parking on both sides and no yellow lines or any other restrictions.

Shouldn't be ANY parking issues there you may think ...

But you'd be wrong. Hardly anyone uses their garage as a garage (I'm a total minority). Over 75%of the houses have had the garden paved and most have had the kerb dropped. Most have taken out their entire frontage (as opposed to only taking out a car width) and so there are no odd car lengths between paved gardens still available next to short bits of wall. People have paved gardens even though they have no car. People with paved gardens still park their cars on the odd street speace left. People park badly taking up two spaces with one car. People stick notes on each others cars and have big rows ...

I even got a note left on mine telling me not to park up near to the property line (not over it, near to it!!) because it made it hard to get into the neighbouring paved garden (despite the fact the dropped kerb only started 2 yards into their property!).

It'll end in tears!

 

[Radar]

I was talking about them putting underground car parking in new blocks. This doesn't really lessen the amount of flats in the block.

But it ups the unit cost as building an underground carpark costs a good bit more than vanilla concrete foundations on levelled off ground. Same effect, flat price goes up. And that's only allowing for any increase due to higher building costs. The increased demand for properties with offstreet parking would also come into play (and I suspect be a LOT more significant)

You are clearly starting from the preconception that people shouldn't have cars at all.

No. I'm a biker and it would be rather hypocritical of me to deny others their own transport when I have it myself. I might not like you driving your car with only yourself in it, but I have no intention of stopping you from doing so if you can afford to pay for the privilege.

True, not everyone has or needs one. I just remarked that I have seen planning apps where the developer wanted to make a basement car park (so no loss of flats) and the council would not have it

Dealt with in 1st para. It would make the flats more expensive. Or perhaps it gells with a stated council policy to reduce private car ownership or keep housing costs down. Who knows ? The TH policy I spoke about referrs to an agreement under Section 106 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. I wonder what that stipulates ?

When you complain about "buy to let" owners complaining because parking restrictions "would affect their rental incomes", what you are actually saying is that parking restrictions will put a significant chunk of the population off renting there (because they need somewhere to park their cars).

Only the ones that need to be sub-let. If one family occupies one flat, and they have one car then no problem. If you've allowed someone to rent then sublet because you couldn't get a single family to take it, and now there's four blokes trying to park 2 vans and 2 cars in that single space. Strangely enough, I strenuously object to folk making money at the expense of my quality of life. Bins not being collected because some twunt parked in front of them for three days running. Not being able to get my own bike onto the road because someone blocked my entance by parking on yellow lines, Tossers double parking at night potenially blocking fire brigade access !!

Accept it. There is not enough roadside parking to satisfy demand. To provide additional parking spaces over and above street parking costs money.

If you want a space, pay for it yourself and pay full whack! !! Don't expect your neighbours and/or your community to subsidise you.

 

[detective-boy]

I very much doubt that.

Sadly it's true.

An approved access can be obstructed (approval is uslaly defined by the dropping of the kerb on payment of the council charge).

Even if an access is NOT approved, obstruction of the exit of a vehicle already on the premises could well amount to an offence as well.

The basic common law is that NO-ONE has ANY basic right to park on a highway (road or footway). Your common law right is to "pass and re-pass".

 

[gentlegreen]

Methinks a letter to the council is in order ....

 

[ELO]

Accept it. There is not enough roadside parking to satisfy demand. To provide additional parking spaces over and above street parking costs money.

It does. However couldn't some of the massive amounts of motoring taxation be used towards it, especially now we are building far fewer roads.

If you want a space, pay for it yourself and pay full whack! !! Don't expect your neighbours and/or your community to subsidise you.

I agree council tax money shouldn't be used for this, I see the council's role more as an organiser. If this parking was provided in bulk 'full whack' would be considerably less. And again I stress I am talking about outside London here, where the transport system is very different.

 

[Giles]

Only the ones that need to be sub-let. If one family occupies one flat, and they have one car then no problem. If you've allowed someone to rent then sublet because you couldn't get a single family to take it, and now there's four blokes trying to park 2 vans and 2 cars in that single space. Strangely enough, I strenuously object to folk making money at the expense of my quality of life. Bins not being collected because some twunt parked in front of them for three days running. Not being able to get my own bike onto the road because someone blocked my entance by parking on yellow lines, Tossers double parking at night potenially blocking fire brigade access !!

Accept it. There is not enough roadside parking to satisfy demand. To provide additional parking spaces over and above street parking costs money.

If you want a space, pay for it yourself and pay full whack! !! Don't expect your neighbours and/or your community to subsidise you.

It's not the house-owners business how many cars or vans their tenants have, is it? If the tenants bring too many cars to the streets, then that's their fault. I hate this attitude that because someone rents, rather than owns, their house, that the person, company or organisation that they rent it from should somehow take responsibility for their tenants behaviour.

If I live in a house, and park badly, that's my fault. Not the person I rented the house off of.

Giles..

 

[Radar]

If I live in a house, and park badly, that's my fault. Not the person I rented the house off of.

Giles..

A one off case of bad parking is indeed your fault.

Who's fault is it that 4 tenants are trying to fit into the properties one parking space, day in day out ?? The tenants ? The next door neighbour who won't let them park in his space ? Perhaps its that bastard in number 42 ?

Nahh, it's the fucker who rented out his property to drivers without making it clear that there's no parking available.

We should all suffer a reduced quality of life because he wants to make money ?? Sod that for a game of soldiers

 

[Errol's son]

We should all suffer a reduced quality of life because he wants to make money ??

No you should sort it out. The flat should have been advertised either with or without parking and the advert should have stated clearly how many spaces are available. So chat to the other residents, get hold of the ad, speak to the owner and residents and come up with a plan.

I have encountered this problem as a tenant; I rented a place with a parking space only to find I was not supposed to use it. The residents community met to discuss this problem. It was decided that there was no way I could park there as the parking space the agent had told me was mine belonged to another flat. So I lost the space but I took the agent to court and won very generous compensation for the flat being worth less as there was no parking space. It was all very simple really.

I would do something thjough rather than just moan about it on bulletin boards.

 

[Errol's son]

Nahh, it's the fucker who rented out his property to drivers without making it clear that there's no parking available.

It could very easily be the estate agent blagging or the tenants taking the piss.