to think that either there should be a limit to the number of cars kept at one address or that developers should be forced to plan adequate parking on new estates (another parking thread!!!)

[FeelingSoLucky]

DH and I have spent 7 years of racing to be the first home so we can both get parked due to having really inconsiderate neighbours who took up more than their fair share of space in a joint parking bay in front of both of our houses. Plenty of room to park the 4 cars we had between us but their parking was so bad, we could only fit 3 in.

They've now moved out, the house is empty and on the market so next door but one neighbours have now started parking there and today have blocked access to my drive. There are 5 adults in their house (mum, dad & three grown up kids/partners of kids... I don't know, they've never made any effort to speak to us in 7 years and I gave up years ago) who all have cars, meaning not only do they fill up their drive, they park on their front garden. So now they've decided they're going to take our parking space as well.

I know parking threads are boring but I'm home alone with a young baby and just needed to vent!! I will be speaking to them if the situation continues.

But it did get me thinking - with the amount of threads about parking problems that you see on here, it's obviously not just a problem where I live. So I was wondering, do people think there should be a cap on the amount of vehicles that can be kept at an adress? Or should developers of new estates be forced to build houses with adequate parking for the number of occupants that could possibly live in the house. A 5 bed roomed detached could easily house 5+ car owning adults yet there is never usually space for more than 2 cars.

We're looking to move house but we're being put off a number of new estates because cars are crammed onto every available bit of off road space or at the side of every road because houses are not given enough parking space.

Rant over... I'm off to make a cuppa!

[Fleta]

Fleta, I know you are particularly annoyed at people parking badly, but these threads are mostly about there not being enough spaces anyway. Number 7 comes home and finds 'his' space full so he parks in front of Number 5 and then rants about it being unfair that people park outside other people's houses

Absolutely. I don't have a problem and can't understand why people get so peeved about not being able to park directly outside their house. Of course there are exceptions where its necessary or would be useful as a one off and I can totally see why people get angry in this case.

But I still think that if everybody were to be conscious of how they park etc it would make life a lot easier for everyone, especially as there are more and more cars on the road needing to be parked

[Spickle]

My old house was within a 7 minute walk from the centre of town and the mainline railway station. Because it was not considered to be a major road, the council refused to introduce any parking restrictions. It just became a free car park for commuters who left their cars on both sides of the road (leaving narrow gap in between so no chance of emergency vehicles having access). The commuters would start arriving at around 6 am and vehicles were often still there at 8 pm Monday to Friday. It was awful but I realised I had to put up with it as I did have space for two cars on the drive but inconsiderate commuters sometimes made it difficult to access.

It was one of the major considerations we had when we moved and luckily we now don't have any problems at all. Wonderful.

[FeelingSoLucky]

I agree with Fleta re considerate parking. My issue is not that there is theoretically not enough space for DH and I to get parked but that my previous neighbours would leave such a gap between their cars that it if they got parked up first, there would only be enough room for 3 cars instead of 4. Also my other issue is that a neighbour with a driveway and front garden which is regularly used for parking has now decided that that parking bay in front of our house which they have seen us using for 7 years is now the place where she wants to park without any consideration for us. One of the reasons we bought this house was for the apparent ease of parking but it has ended up being worse than the ex-council house we used to own. When we move again, I'll be making sure there's enough of a driveway to park both our cars (ours is tiny, too narrow & too often blocked off by inconsiderate parkers).

[SoulJacker]

The estates round here have enough parking spaces in planning terms but these spaces are often not in front of houses but in courtyards to the rear. Nobody uses them, preferring to park by their front door but when new developments are proposed with these layouts the planners have no power to refuse as they technically meet the required standard. They know nobody will use their allocated parking but because it exists it's not a reason for refusal.

[34DD]

Where I live they they have just introduced resident only parking during the daytime

Your car has to be registered at your address and you get 1 free permit
Any extra ones are charged at £100 max of 3 inc free permit

If you have a driveway your expected to use it and if you want to buy a permit its £250 per year per car if you have a driveway and need an extra permit
Again max of 3 permits I think

You also get 50 free day/ visitors permits and then it approx £100 per £50

Otherwise you have to pay via the parking meters

[BackOnlyBriefly]

Fleta, I know you are particularly annoyed at people parking badly, but these threads are mostly about there not being enough spaces anyway. Number 7 comes home and finds 'his' space full so he parks in front of Number 5 and then rants about it being unfair that people park outside other people's houses.

[Fleta]

I sympathise, but how is it possible to park considerately? Doesn't that just mean "park in front of someone else's house, not mine" ?

Absolutely not.

For me parking considerately is: -

1. Not parking in a car parking space that legally belongs to someone else.
   
2. Not parking so your car is over the end of someone's drive
   
3. Not parking so close to the neighbour's car that they are parked in.
   
4. Parking efficiently and well so that a bay designed for three cars can fit three cars, not one just plonked in the middle.

[AnnaLegovah]

This is a big bugbear of mine and when we move I'll be looking at the parking situation for a new house very closely.

Our tiny Victorian terraced road is always crammed with car (no-one has drives). Neighbour on one side is renting out to 4 lodgers, all of whom have a car (and all of their girlfriends who visit regularly have cars too). Neighbours on other side have 3 cars (there's 2 of them living there). We have 1 car and it's a lucky day when we can park on our road, let alone outside our house. It was a nightmare when DD was tiny. And don't get me started on neighbour over the road who simply can't parallel park so positions her car to take up 2 spaces so she can get out easily selfish bitch.

The new estate round the corner is notorious for the kind of parking others have described. Not much you can do about it though.

This is a town where everyone is obsessed with cars and wouldn't be seen dead using public transport or walking more than 2 roads.

[sunshinemeg]

In our first rented home there were 2 labelled places per house. I remember once coming home to find hubby already parked and a strange car in the other space. I just parked in front thereby blocking hubby and other car. I assumed there was a visitor at our house. When I found out I was wrong I just left it. The owner of the car then had to come and ask me to move my car later so I made it clear then that it meant fair to take designated parking or to be so selfish!

[BackOnlyBriefly]

I sympathise, but how is it possible to park considerately? Doesn't that just mean "park in front of someone else's house, not mine" ?

The situation is mad though. Either we make public transport work (we could, but we choose not to.) or we say there must be parking space for say one car per bedroom.

That's not going to happen because anyone with the power to make that happen already lives in a detached home with plenty of parking and probably makes their money from property development.

[Essexgirlupnorth]

Our new builds have drives for two cars but one of the neighbours has a huge camper van they are doing up and park two cars and a white van on the road on the bend so your can't see round the corner.
People use our road as a cut through and I am just waiting for an accident to happen either a car is going to come round the corner to fast and hit someone or one of the kids that play in the street is going to get hurt. The people opposite can't get their car in the drive sometimes because of the inconsiderate parking

[wonkylegs]

The OPs suggestion to limit how many cars each house can have is too much of a blunt instrument.
At our old house (city based Victorian terrace) there was no individual parking just on street parking. You could tell who lived there and who were visiting generally by the standard of parking - we all became experts at tight parallel parking so we could squeeze in. Most houses had 1-2 cars.
At our new house (rural Victorian semi with massive drive & garage) we have lowered the number of cars per household considerably by just having 2. My neighbours have 6 on one side & 4 on the other but there are no issues with parking as we've all got large plots & can park within them.
Neither of these houses were built with cars in mind as is the situation for a large proportion of the U.K. housing stock, therefore it's not particularly surprising that issues with parking arise.

[CruCru]

Where I live (Islington) we have to pay for residential parking (otherwise we can't park on the street) and can't have more than two cars per house. Perhaps suggest that a similar scheme is brought in?

[wowfudge]

So I can't get to the garage

[wowfudge]

Parking is such an emotive issue. Where we used to live there was only on street parking - all terraced housing - and some people would flip out if they couldn't park outside their own house and worse if someone else had the temerity to park outside their house when their car was elsewhere. I always took the view that if you could get a space right outside then you were lucky. I learned to parallel park in tiny spaces pretty darn quick though.

We now have lovely big garage you could get two or three cars in. The only problem is that my DP has put a car he needs to fix on the drive do I can't get to the garage or park on the drive! I know, I know. After a couple of months I had to give up letting it bother me or I'd have gone nuts.

[foreverondiet]

The difficultly with this is that you'd be penalising people who were "efficient" wrt housing as sever adults living at one address.

I think a better solution would be double car tax for someone's second car and in order to avoid people registering cars to their grannies who can't drive - the car insurance would need to be taken in the name of the owner of the vehicle.

[Oldraver]

Were I live a new housing estate was built about 12 odd years ago. The council had this bright idea that they would like to hide all the cars form view so houses were all built with little car parks round the back. The allowed 1.5 parking spaces per house. Very few houses have traditional drives at the side of the house, so as a result many of the houses are of a terraced design with effectivly no front gardens. Its like Coronation Street in Cotswold Stone

Of course there are not enough parking spaces so people have started parking on the road, its hell to get around, you also walround the estate and it is like a ghost town, you dont get that people out the front of the houses gardening saying hello to neighbours

[ConcreteElephant]

Our old house (ex-council) had a little car park with houses along 2 sides. This was sufficient for years but one set of neighbours gradually seemed to up their cars to about 5 or 6 cars there at a time. As the sons grew up they got their own cars, two of the family were taxi drivers so there were those too, and then they started letting family members who were taxi drivers leave their cars there (that was a step too far!). I became irrationally annoyed by it and I know it's a bone of contention with my former neighbours still, in an otherwise lovely little place to live.

Our new house was extended in the mid-90s and the council made it a condition of planning that it had to have space for 3 cars on the front drive (we only have one but when the children are older no doubt that may change - the previous owners had grown-up children who drove) - to keep cars off the main avenue as much as possible. There's very little on-road parking here as people have drives which they use. The newer built estate behind us doesn't seem to have taken cars into consideration at all with its planning - it's dreadful round there of an evening. I don't know if our council is still strict over developments or not - I feel they should be.

It's crazy how something little like ease of parking can have such an impact on us!

[RedToothBrush]

The problem with our estate, is the roads are unadopted by the council they can't paint double yellow lines and no one can actually legally enforce the no parking. They started clamping as it got very bad at one point, but had to stop that as they can no longer legally do that either.

So the situation is we have it written into the terms of residence, but actually no one can do anything if someone refuses to observe it.

Go figure.

[Nomama]

Then they are Parking Scum and shall be Incinerated.

How can people be so utterly thick?

Repaint the lines in neon pink, add posts with flame throwers...

Or one of my favourite Spanish signs, Beware the Grua! Sounds like an amazingly hungry carnivore - but is a tow truck

[Fleta]

TBH, I think the lack of consideration for others is as much of an issue as the lack of spaces

I so agree with this. If everyone took two minutes to see whether their parking was having an adverse effect on others, I suspect a lot of parking issues would disappear!

[RedToothBrush]

TBH, I think the lack of consideration for others is as much of an issue as the lack of spaces.

There is supposed to be no street parking on our street - it is written into the contract of sale and there are signs up saying no parking (This is in part for safety reasons as its opposite a playground and they obstruct vision and to ensure that emergency vehicles can access the rest of the estate easily as the road is narrow when cars are parked).

All the houses have two spaces in a car park 10 metres from the house. Yet the neighbours frequently park on the street simply because they can't be arsed to park properly and walk 10 extra metres to their front door. The spaces are adequate in size to accommodate even the extra large 4 x 4 one of them has.

It comes down to pure laziness ultimately.

[Theresadogonyourballs]

Our new build estate is horrendous for this, when you arrive home in the evening there are cars parked everywhere - half on pavements, on the grass, blocking driveways etc etc. We have one space for our house, it is clearly marked. However, I have frequently come home to find a strange car nestling in it. Last time, (I had PMT), I was so enraged I hammered on every neighbours door til I found the culprit. It was a visitor, but the owners of the house had told them to park there as, "we thought you were out". Oh well, that's alright then. They didn't even apologise!
My neighbour is currently the focus of my rage - their house is one of the very few that has a garage attached. It's a huge double garage and they have two large cars. Do they park them in there? Do they fuck, they hog the one and only visitors space with one car, and leave the other parked half on the pavement outside their front door, the lazy bastards. I saw inside the garage the other day - it's completely empty apart from a couple of garden tools. I can't think about it too much actually or I fear my head may actually explode.

[YoDiggity]

I completely agree with you OP.

It's all very well developers saying that they are supporting a move lower car dependency but the simple fact is they do not provide neough parking because they are greedy and want to cram as many houses into the development as possible for profit. Look at the residential streets that were built in the 60's and 70's when car ownership really took off - there is no comparison.

The simple fact is that we live in a world where it is not practical to get everywhere we need to be on foot or by public transport, and our children are staying at home longer and longer due to not being able to afford to leave home. We need, and should demand, adequate parking per housing unit.

The only way that will happen is when we refuse to buy new build houses that don't have it.

[Fleta]

Actually Abzs - that's a really good point. I suspect a lot of people who suggest their drive is too small width ways to park on (as our opposite neighbours do) are just not capable of parking on it!