To think cars and wheelie bins are big factors in why a lot of areas look terrible?

[Netamount]

Cars are everywhere - households with two or three. Front gardens concreted over, walls demolished to create parking. Streets double parked. New build estates (that should know better) with inadequate parking, so cars are everywhere. Narrow streets and attractive buildings demolished for relief roads and widening.

Most UK houses weren’t built with four massive bins in mind. Many don’t have easy access to the street from the back, so they have to be kept at the front, and look awful.

I’ve no solutions really (I have a car and four bins too), just wondering what other people thought?

There are two large HQs here of a large government bodies, plus a large hospital and NHS sites. They employ 30% of the town. Obviously not EVERYONE has a 15-minute life, but we do.

A small car would fit. Not denying new garages are smaller BUT choose your car according to the garage size..

Don't people consider this when buying a house / car. You check room sizes for furniture. Lack of planning.

Again, fantasy land 🤣

We've a Citroen C3 which is the smallest car suitable for us. It won't fit in the garage unless we push it in as there's not enough width to open the door once it's in.

YANBU.
Where I live, most houses seem to have 2 cars at least and our drives easily fit 2 cars. The problem is that people can't be bothered doing the car shuffle so they just park one in front of their house. This means that most of the way along the road there are cars on both sides, half on and off the pavement. When we moved here 25 years ago, every house either had 1 or no car and parked in the drive. All you saw if you walked along were well-tended front gardens.
At least round here people put their bins away out of sight.

Then you’re incredibly fortunate to be able to live somewhere like that. Around here, the vast majority commute around an hour each way to work - all the big employers are at least 40 miles away. Even if you can work close to home, we’re still way more than 15 minutes away from a hospital, or a cinema, or a garden centre, or even a bookshop or greengrocer.

I will be honest, I know very little about planning/building regulations but it has never made sense to me. There are so many small things that could be done to make life better for everyone.

British roads/pavements were not built for the size or number of cars/SUVs/bins that are in daily use and their is very little that can be done for existing homes aside from fining people who do not ensure their bins are kept in a decent state and introduce permit parking, so those with more cars pay more to park.

Yes, there are more people who require homes but ill thought out homes/new build estates cause more stress for those that reside in them. Public transport is expensive and some services are patchy. There are many different reasons why people own cars but in general it is to make life easier.

The answer is to build less houses and utilise the space better, however specifics would need to be written into law because most developers do not have a conscience and only care about the amount of money that can be made from the sale of the property. The lifestyle of those who will be left to reside in their properties is an afterthought at best.

This. I never use the local shop as it's more expensive than the supermarket with less choice.

I think so too. I like the Dutch way they put communal bins underground the truck comes along and empties them. You get a keycard and so many bags a year.

Our street is littered with bins despite the fact that all the houses have back gardens and access to the street via a ginnel/snicket/twtten (whatever you choose to call it). We seem to be the only ones prepared to take our bins out and return them each week - yes, we’re lucky enough to still have weekly collections. Nobody else seems to mind how ugly bin scattered street looks.

Yes, it looks horrible. I've had family members from Europe staying over here and they commented on this, too.

Where i live you get multiple adults living in one house (probably not legally) so there are around 4 cars per household! Worst part is lots of them don't even use the driveway

For me it’s the bins that are the biggest nightmare.

My Council in their wisdom have just invested £8m in extra bins / new bin lorries to save an estimated £500k p.a. (so a 16 year payback). Leaving aside the fact that I doubt the bins or the lorries will last 16 years, there appears to be have been no real thought into what we are meant to do with all these extra bins.

They are enormous, two extra bins each with brightly coloured lids, and I and many of my neighbours, have nowhere to store them. They are also far too big for most people. It will take me 6 months + to fill either of the two new bins.

When I wrote to the Council asking for a smaller option I received a really sarcastic response, advising me that they had surveyed the properties in my area and that I was mistaken in my belief that I didn’t have room for them.

I guess if I remove the flower pots and table and chairs from my little courtyard I could squeeze them in, but why should I be forced to turn my courtyard into a bin store when I don’t even need recycling storage of this size? I have already paid to have a storage built above my main waste bin to store the new (much smaller) recycling boxes issued two years ago and even those only need emptying every two months.

This is Unitary decision making gone mad. Our new Unitary is enormous, with no understanding of what life is really like in the small villages it now controls. Neither has it any understanding of the eye sore it has created. The bins were all delivered last week and most are now adorning the curb side outside on our once attractive village street!!

Cars are like giant bits of junk that have been fly tipped on every street. They look awful.

Our neighbours have three on their drive and one parked in front of our house. Only two people in that household can drive!

We own a car and certainly have no intention of getting rid of it, but they make every street look so crap.

I don't have a car. I walk to the supermarket and use a rucksack for heavy things, and go two or three times a week instead of once. The walk, and carrying stuff, is good for me. If it rains, sometimes I get rained on if I can't just plan around it - big deal. It's not fantasy land.

I suspect a big part of it is that bins are a pain in the arse to manoeuvre and it’s much easier to just carry your rubbish out in the morning than it is to faff about dragging heavy bins everywhere.

Ours are only collected fortnightly (if we’re lucky!) and they can be pretty heavy by then.

Cycling isn't necessarily a hobby. Ultimately, a bicycle is a machine that allows humans to move more efficiently, and faster, than walking. There are an estimated half a billion bicycles in China. Are they all owned by hobbyists? My neighbour uses her old, rusty bike to dot around running errands. I don't think she can even mend a puncture. What sort of hobby is that?

In the UK, on average, it rains once every 3 days. So, it's dry approximately 67% of the year. Of course, even days with rain may only have very light rain, or infrequent showers.

Cyclists are fully entitled, by law, to use the roads in this country. Unlike motorists, they require no licence to do so.

We had this when my council introduced seperate recycling bins for plastic and metal. I worked for my council at the time and spent lot of time going to households and collecting unwanted bins. They aren’t mandatory and lots of people felt it would take months to fill up a 240l bin with plastic as they don’t use much / recycle at the supermarket. £3.4 million those bins cost they are really flimsy and the lids twist and never close again every time they get blown over which is a lot. Some people agreed between them to keep a couple for the culdesac or block so can be filled/ emptied and kept in a little bin store. You do have to trust your neighbours as we’d charge to empty a contaminated bin.

@Pistachioitaliano I drive a Smart ForTwo, probably the smallest car available and not really a practical choice for most people. Did it fit in the garage at my old house - just about, yes. But I had to be careful opening the doors. Can you name a car that’s around the size of mine that could accommodate a family safely and comfortably? Garages are far too small for most modern cars.

This chat does remind me though of a house nearby who paint their front door to match their car every time they change it.

But again, it’s time. Three trips to the supermarket on foot is three hours of my time - or I could do one journey in the car that takes maybe 45 minutes in total.

My scoliosis also means I can’t manage heavy things on my back without being in agony for several days afterwards, so DH would have to come with me, which again, is a waste of time when I could just jump in the car.

I do try and do the shopping on the way home from work rather than as a separate journey where possible but unfortunately life doesn’t always work out that way.

The bins and cars are the visible symptom of the real problem, which is that we have too many people living in too small a space. I live on a street with lots of houses that have been converted into flats. Most have space for one car and could fit the bins round the back, but now there are four households, four cars and eight bins.

To solve the problem we need to drastically cut the population density, an absolute maximum needs to be set at 1000 people per square kilometer. People need to be encouraged to move to quieter areas of the country and we need to build a lot more housing on greenbelts and other protected areas.

People need cars and people need a way to dispose of their waste.

We live on a new build estate and the vast majority of houses have ample parking but many people choose to park on the pavement so they can store their bins on the drive. That does my nut!

Nail on the head. Too many people crammed together in too small spaces. And yes, to the houses converted into flats which is another massive problem and people having to rent out rooms to non family members just to pay the bills (and of course, people having to rent a room because they can't afford to rent a flat!). So many houses/flats are occupied by more people than they were originally designed for. One of the many problems of our reliance on older housing stocks, built decades ago when public transport was good and people really could live, work and shop within a short distance of their homes. So much has changed, and over-crowded streets is the almost inevitable consequence. Major changes are needed if we are to deal with this ever increasing problem.

Reversing the city-centric way of living would help, get people moved out of crowded city areas into the regions where things aren't so crowded, but to do that, you need to move the jobs away from the city centres so that people living in the regions actually have decent jobs in their areas.

Yanbu. So many places look so ugly! We have 3 full size wheelie bins per household in my council and Victorian houses that have been converted to two flats therefore have 6 wheelie bins out on the pavement! For a property that would at one time have had one small metal bin.

We have black and green wheelie bins for household and garden waste, red and blue canvas mail bag style bags for plastic/tins and paper, a blue box for glass and a brown box for food recycling. It’s getting a bit much.