Has anyone ever successfully persuaded their council to introduce residents parking in their road?

[headfairy]

How did you manage it? Do you have any tips you can pass on? I'm about to start the process and am a bit clueless.

Bump as I'd like to know too

Yes, we have in theory. We're waiting for it to get to the top of the list.

Firstly, research what other schemes are local to you and find out on what grounds they were granted.

Second, talk to people locally who got schemes granted.

Thirdly, find the right person at the council to talk to, this can take ages. Be nice, be reasonable, invite them to a meeting with residents representatives and have damn good biscuits. Listen to them talk about the red tape and sympathise. Be willing to help them overcome any issues.

Good luck.

And I mean it about the biscuits.

Yes, we did (me and my neighbours). First of all we knocked on all doors within a five street radius, spoke to them about parking and gave them a flyer detailing issues.

Then after a month we went back and asked for opinions, 60% were in favour of permit parking when we spoke to them. We then got them to sign a petition and submitted it to the council.

The petition was accepted and the council did a formal enquiry, 55% voted in favour and we were granted permit parking.

It took just over a year to get everything done. Go knock on doors, get people interested, make sure you know about costs/hours/enforcement - you will be heard if you get everyone on side. We pay £200 for two cars (so it's not cheap) but we can park outside our house any time of day and it has made life so much easier.

theskiinggardner there are no schemes locally at all. I spoke to the local council and they referred me to the county council parking department, but before she did she said there were only three schemes across Surrey (I find that very hard to believe). I must admit I haven't seen any schemes in our borough, but the woman at the borough council did say they'd had a lot of enquiries recently.

The problem has become really bad in the last five years... We're ten mins from a mainline station into London, plus our town centre has several large insurance companies offices. To my shame I must admit I've followed a few people who've parked here and most work in those offices, at ten past five our road empties!

Also I think the council themselves have made the problem worse by granting permission for lots of people to pave their front gardens, thus losing lots of kerb space to park against (the dropped kerbs are usually the width of the house, about two car lengths). Now they've completely changed their minds about allowing dropped kerbs as they're bad for the environment, but those of us without a paved front garden are left fighting over a tiny amount of kerb space with everyone wanting to park in our road while they go to work.

We had a street party last week and one of my retired neighbours leafletted all the cars to tell them not to park there on the dy of the party, and in a two week period he counted over 300 different cars in the street (it's not long, only 60 houses, 30 each side)!

The biggest problem we have is that more than 50% of the houses have OSP, the rest of us are left battling over the few inches left.

Sorry, that turned in to a bit of an epic...

we are about to get some kind of parking restriction.

similar to you, in that we are 10 mins away form mainline to London - we get commuter parking (the station car park is oversubscribed), and it is getting ridiculous.

all the houses in the street have off-street parking, but it is dangerous at times trying to get out of gates/driveways due to crappy parking by said commuters.

council have proposed draconian 'no parking between 8.30am and 6.30pm' measures.

residents want eg an hour, say 9-10, restricted, as then can continue to have visitors staying/friends for coffee without gaining temp permits etc.

negotiations are continuing, but I doubt we'll win somehow.

Yes, in an area close to a university where more houses were being turned into students HMOs.

1. Take photos on weekdays, week evenings and weekend to compare the different times of the week and the week.

1. If near a university take photos during the Summer months when no students around, repeat when students return in September.

1. Go knock on each door and find out whether the house is owned by the residents or whether the house is a HMO. Document this in a spreadsheet, nice Word doc table.

1. Find out how many cars in each house - either by asking or by observing. Please be careful that you do not put yourself in harm's way. Add this info to your above document or spreadsheet.

All the above allows you to build up evidence re how many cars in the road, what times the parking is worse and how many cars each house has. For example, in my case a student HMO could have up to 8 people which meant up to 8 cars per HMO. This became intolerable during the uni term times.

If the amount of cars in the road make it difficult for cars to travel up and down the road - i.e. they narrow or block the road - you can contact the local Fire Service. If they can't get a fire engine down the road then it puts people's lives in danger and often the Fire Service will be able to do something re stopping people parking on street corners, etc. Obviously, this lessens the number of spaces to park in so it gives you added ammunition to demand resident parking.

Of course, try and get local councillors on your side.

Alas, once you get the resident spaces you then need the council to come and actually fine people who illegally park in them - now that councils can make all of the money from this they usually are very keen.

Lastly, of course and as already mentioned, get your neighbours to sign your document as a petition.

I have lived in a residents' parking zone and it was supported by the Neighbourhood Committee and a local councillor.

Make sure you're calm and sound reasonable when speaking to your neighbours. I voted against ours just because the instigator wound me up so much with the selfishness of the terms she was proposing. And ours is a street that is full of cars during the day from local workers. But where are they supposed to park?

Thanks for the replies... swedish I will try sound as rational as possible I found another supporter today. As I struggled bsck from the car (which was parked a ten min walk away of course) carrying a large box from ikea, someone offered to help. I said thanks but I'm ok, I just wished people wouldn't park in my road so I could get closer... Turns our he's from about 6 doors up and is as frustrated as I am!

I'm on very good terms with most neighbours in my road... Every couple of years we have a street party, and we had ours last weekend so we've been all meeting up in the pub most weeks to organise it. I know most at my end of the road (where we have the biggest problems, not many front gardens have parking spaces) are by up for residents parki to be introduced. It's persuading those at the other end....

We are trying. Lots of residents zones here and we tried to join the one in the next street but they voted against us. Tried to start one with other streets. No go. So now it's just our street. Only 2 houses have off street parking and there's about 15 spaces in their proposed area ( for about 90 houses), 49 in our suggested area plus some extra in the evening.

How does residents parking work? We live in a street similar to headfairy's. Lots of student housing and other HMOs. Lots of people have built driveways (you don't have to have PP here ) and each one takes two public spaces away to provide a huge drive used for one car.

The people with drives then all fight over the space left outside everyone else's house to park their additional cars and their many visitors. Basically if you move your car even for 5 minutes you won't get back in again.

Our house and the one either side of us do not have a drive, but one side has a disabled space. Across the road from us we have 4 student houses in a row, all with drives. House A has 3 cars plus 2 very regular visitors. House B has 5 boys all with cars. House C has a number of people - don't know how many actually live there. 2 park on the drive. Another 3 park down the road. House D has 3 cars there all the time (1 in drive, one across and one on this side of the road) plus another 4 or 5 who appear regularly. All of them like to park in front of our house, and leave them there for a week at a time.

If there was a residents scheme presumably most of these cars actually do live here so could still park in front of our house ? What about visitors? Where do they go? Doesn't it just move the problem on to the next road?

My experience of a parking scheme is neutral, really.

Usually a road or grid of roads is selected and becomes the 'zone'. The Council puts signs up in the zone, and issues parking permits to residents to be able to park in the zone. You still do not have the right to park outside your house, just in the zone.

The zone can be enforced for 24 hours a day, or even only 2 hours a day (if the problem is, say, commuter parking between 6am and 8am).

Different councils charge different amounts for first permits. Some councils allow a second or third permit per household, some don't; and again, charge differing amount for these. The vehicles normally have to be registered to the address, to deter works vans and students' cars.

Visitors usually can park for up to X hours for free, or will need to have a vistor's pass which is the householder's responsibility to obtain and provide.

The problem of displacement parking is well documented, i.e. parking problems become more acute in adjacent neighbourhoods, who then in turn request a parking scheme. Because they are relatively expensive to run (enforcement, administration) there will be inevitable pressure for the cost of permits to rise in the future.

I hate the scheme they have introduced here- it's purely a revenue raiser for the council. The roads are pretty empty during the day anyway as residents are at work, so if non-residents want to park here and keep our excellent local shops in business, I'm all for them. I don't own a car and rely on them. I could have a visitor pass for guests (oooh just the one, how generous), but if I forget to pass it out even once, they (and let's face it, by decency, me) will have to cough up sixty quid. Fuck that.

Sorry for the hijack- do continue! I was just prompted to get that off my chest

LeBOF, these are important points! Every scheme has its pros and cons.

When I live in a residents' parking zone I didn't have a car and it was a real bloody pain when I got flooded and had builders and decorators in for days on end.

The car owners loved the scheme, though, I have to say. And when it was introduced, our road - which previously had been clogged with massive white vans every weekend - was much clearer and safer for the kids to cross.

Ours is one permit per house and one visitors permit. No charge. It was voted against this time ( £10 was suggested). Id be happy to pay something if they'd give us the scheme.

sabriel I'm not sure our roads are that similar... We don't really have any HMOs (well just one that's a house for adults with learning difficulties, but none of them drive and their carers have a parking space at the side of the house. Most of the houses are owner occupied. I've just done a quick totting up of houses with off street parking and those without, and of the 52 houses in the road, 36 have off street parking. That's 69%. I wonder with those numbers whether we'd get the support in the road.

The problem we have is very much people working in town centre and parking their cars all day in our road, or people parking in our road to use the station in to London. We do have a few shoppers leaving their cars while they pop in to town, but I don't mind that so much as they don't block a space for a whole day.

When I've been in previous schemes, the residents get about 10 visitor permits free of charge every year, plus they can buy additional ones for something like £1 each. I've never had a problem with visitors parking in our previous house.

I do appreciate resident parking schemes just move the problem on, but to be honest I think the whole area has a problem with commuter parking, the other streets around us are just as packed during the day. I think if they all joined the zone then the commuters would be pushed so far away it's not actually worth them driving in to town (we have a brilliant bus service at the top of our road they can use that instead :o)

The town centre is just about to embark on a massive rebuilding programme. The local supermarket is doubling in size, there are plans for two other supermarkets in the area, we're getting a huge new cinema in the town centre, the station car park is being relocated (not sure if it's getting any bigger though) and the whole road system is being redeveloped. I can only see the problems getting worse and worse to be honest.

I think commuter parking can be dealt with by having a scheme that only needs enforcement for a couple of hours in the morning, keeping the costs of the scheme (and the cost of the residents' permits) down.

I think the average administration costs per permit is about £15 p.a. Enforcement costs (i.e. the parking wardens' wages) come on top of that.

That's all I want really LineRunner. My sister lives in Balham and that's what they have, it just runs from 10am-11am which means anyone parking for the day can't do so, or has to run out of their office to drive around for an hour (which I cant' imagine any one will do)

Do you know who your local councillors are? I'd suggest the 'commuter / low-cost' model to them, and ask them if they would do a survey of your neighbourhood or get the council to do it.

I don't but I do have a card from one who came around during the run up to the local elections. I wasn't in, but dh said he'd only vote for him if he'd look in to the residents parking situation. He promised to look in to it so I might chase him up on it. I have been told by the borough council that it's actually the county council who deal with these issues, but I imagine if I've got a friendly local councillor on board it'll help grease a path to the upper echelons of the Parking department of Surrey CC :o

They'll all be on on the council website, anyway, with email addresses etc. Always worth a punt.