New build - Parking woes

Lokolo

My local council has guidelines for new builds. Personally I still feel as though these are inadequate.

The number of cars per household has risen over the past 50 years and this hasn't been taken into account for planning rules.

http://www.racfoundation.org/assets/rac_foundation/content/downloadables/car%20ownership%20in%20great%20britain%20-%20leibling%20-%20171008%20-%20report.pdf

Car ownership is closely related to the number of households and the number of
people in the household. Over 77% of households in Great Britain have a car and
because car-owning households tend to have more than one person (most noncar
owning households are single person households) the number of people with
access to a car in the house is 81% of the total population. Growth in car
ownership has largely been through the increase in the number of households with
two or more cars as the proportion of one car households has remained
remarkably constant at 44% since the mid 1960’s (See: Figure 3).

Since 1970 the number of one car households has stayed at around 40%. The number of two car households has risen from approximately 5% to 15% and the number of three car households has risen from ~0% to 5%.

It's even worse that people will now park on paths, blocking access for buggys and wheelchairs. My local town Facebook group is full of it.

Either the number of cars needs to be reduced or more appropriate parking decisions need to be made.

cajef

When I moved to take up another position with my company we rented a property in a cul-de sac on a new estate for six months until we found our own place to buy, there was a drive that would take one car and an attached garage, on putting my car in the garage I found I couldn't open the doors wide enough to get out and we could just manage to squeeze out of my OH's smaller car with great difficulty.

Leaving one car on the road outside meant blocking other people access., needless to say it is the one and only time we lived in a new build property.

keith969

bob_bank_spanker wrote: »

Why is that a failure of the planning system? A development near me (Paintworks, Bristol) has about 0.4 parking spaces per dwelling, which seems fine to me.

It's a failure because the development in question was some distance out of town down a dual carriageway, and when built was not served by a bus route. So people living there pretty much had to have their own transport. With the typical residents having two cars (like the OP here), planning for 1 was just plain irresponsible.

AJ84

DoaM wrote: »

Do you have that in any form of writing that can be traced back to the developers?

Is the communal land still owned and managed by the developers?
Is it the developers that are proposing the new parking scheme?

Nothing admissible in court as they say - the initial sale was recorded but more for us so we wouldnt forget the name of the tile we selected or whatever.

Also as mentioned here - it is very difficult to gauge what fits/doesnt fit when you buy a new build. We saw a dug up ground and nothing more. It's only when the building goes up do the little things come to light for instance, the show home had side windows in the kitchen and hallway...we do not (in our case, for obvious reasons).
But it's these things you do not realise.
Same goes for the rear neighbours...for 1 year, it was great...then the houses went up and suddenly we thought ... hang on, its darker, the view of the oak tree has gone and most importantly, i can from upstairs see straight down to the top of the rear neighbour sitting in her lounge or garden - ok not litereally but you get the point and obviously if we can see all that, they can too.
On the plans, unless you study a relevant degree, you can't tell how far it's going to be and how imposing until its too late

ciderboy2009

bob_bank_spanker wrote: »

A development near me (Paintworks, Bristol) has about 0.4 parking spaces per dwelling, which seems fine to me.

Paintworks is within easy walking distance of the centre of Bristol though so people have got options to get to work.

You just need to look at the parking problems in the new estates around St George to see the nightmare that limited parking can cause. Just being that little bit further out, coupled with the hopeless public transport in Bristol causes chaos.

stator

Lokolo wrote: »

My local council has guidelines for new builds. Personally I still feel as though these are inadequate.

The number of cars per household has risen over the past 50 years and this hasn't been taken into account for planning rules.

That's not quite true. Councils are well aware of the average number of cars owned per household. If a developed wanted to build a 2 bedroom semi with two parking spaces, the council would say 'you should only have one parking space' and a separate area for visitor parking.
They design the rules to put people off owning cars. They're all obsessed with trying to get people to cycle and take the bus etc.

ScorpiondeRooftrouser

DoaM wrote: »

Do you have that in any form of writing that can be traced back to the developers?

Of course they don't. The developers wouldn't make them a promise in writing that it is impossible for them to keep. What if the neighbours all had eight cars each?

dannyrst

Why is this an issue with just new builds? Someone bought a house near my girlfriends parents and they have two cars and often a company vehicle to park. Needless to say, they've found a cone to put outside their house because they have a right to park outside their house (obviously nobody else does as the other cars go outside other peoples houses).

moneyistooshorttomention

PasturesNew wrote: »

As said above, you might think it works "between you", but the spots aren't "for just you" - they are visitor spots - and others might feel aggrieved that they are not getting what they paid for - in short, a space for their visitors.

It is annoying if you've relied on "it works for us" until now, but you bought one parking space .... and one must always expect things to be enforced if you know you're bending the rules technically.

Added to which I would wonder whether your "it works for us" comment has boiled down to people talking to each other and giving advance warning they were expecting visitors to come round and use everyone's visitor parking spaces?

One does not expect to have to "talk to" neighbours about whether they will take their own cars out of visitor parking spaces by definition. They are visitor spaces and so one either gets unlucky that other peoples visitors have filled those spaces already when your own visitors come round OR other people havent filled the spaces with their visitors and they are therefore empty (ready for your own visitors).

You don't expect other nearby home-owners to have filled "visitor spaces" by definition. If the developer really told you that was okay at the outset - then they were wrong to do so and you were wrong to decide "I want to believe them and so I will".

Lokolo

stator wrote: »

That's not quite true. Councils are well aware of the average number of cars owned per household. If a developed wanted to build a 2 bedroom semi with two parking spaces, the council would say 'you should only have one parking space' and a separate area for visitor parking.
They design the rules to put people off owning cars. They're all obsessed with trying to get people to cycle and take the bus etc.

Well yes, the council describe it as not setting a minimum or maximum, but setting an optimum standard. But either way, its still inadequate, otherwise we wouldn't have threads like this.

In my area the optimum number of cars for a 1 bed is 1, 2 bed is 1.5 (2 outside of the town), 3 bed is 2 (3 outside of the town).

1.5 means 1 but with a shared space for each whole number on the number of dwellings.

So a 16x 2 bed build would have 16 spaces + 8 visitor spaces. Based on the statistics https://www.statista.com/statistics/300036/break-down-of-people-buying-cars-in-the-united-kingdom/ there would be an average of 17.75 cars on 16 dwellings. Which means typically someone would need to use a visitor bay permanently.