DroppedKerbsDebate: Only 3.5 (instead of 4.5) Metres Frontage Depth?

[Reg Adams]

It is now becoming evident what a can of worms the Council opened up when they introduced a Controlled Parking Zone around ClockHouse Station. But if the objective was to stop "outsiders" (like rail commuters, Capita employees and patrons of The Spa) from hogging many of the parking-spaces in the area, then the objective seems to have been achieved. And residents in Queens Road, Elm Road, etc. are indeed finding it easier to park outside their own properties. The downside is that residents who live just outside the CPZ are finding it a lot more difficult to park outside their properties. This is a case of paying Peter by robbing Paul. Whereas the objective should have been to ease the intense pain suffered by the few (i.e. the residents who were previously most affected by outsiders-parking) by spreading and therefore diluting the pain over a wider area.

Anyway, another weapon in the armoury of people who want to carve out a bit of parking-space for themselves is to have the front garden partly or totally paved-over, with a vehicle crossover (aka dropped-kerb) for access. Naturally, because you are going to be driving over the public footway/pavement, you have to get Council permission to do this. And they charge you for the necessary work of strengthening the pavement and modifying the kerb, as well as exhorting you to install rainwater-permeable materials. Under the present rules, you won't get permission to have a crossover unless your property has a frontage that is 4.5 metres deep. The depth is measured as a straight line between the edge of the footway (nearest to the property) and the most protruding part of the property itself (e.g. the front wall under the bay-window). The idea is that a vehicle parked on the frontage won't overhang the public footway. The downside of creating more off-street parking in this way is that we all have a lot less flowers and foliage to look at

This 4.5 metres rule may be about to change. The Council is considering reducing the depth requirement to 3.5 metres, provided that the width of the frontage is at least 6.5 metres – to accommodate parallel parking (as distinct from parking at right-angles to the property). See the attached *.PDF for the Council Officer's report ES09140, which is due to be debated by Councillors at meetings in the Civic Centre that are open to the public on 3 November (Development Control) and 16 November (Environment PDS), start-times 19:30.

What do you think? I'm keen to hear, either via this website or direct to: [e-mail]

[Paul Sanderson,]

The new CPZ certainly has had the desired effect on commuter parking in Queens Road (though in one respect a bonkers road marking anomaly directly outside my house means that my own parking has taken on a bizarre twist that wasn't necessary before).

For the moment, perhaps due to the stuttering start of the CPZ where even the residents weren't sure if it was in force or not, few visitors seem to be using the parking meters on Cedars Road. If that remains the case, we must assume the council will recoup the shortfall of hoped-for revenue by the usual method.

This is early days, and it remains to be seen how things turn out in the Queens Road/Elm Road residents' parking bays when regular Spa-users, library-users and Beacon-users figure out that parking in the resident's parking bays is entirely free and unrestricted during weekdays except for 10am-12 – and, better still, is now more readily available than it ever was before.

Displacement parking
As anticipated, displacement parking has happened to a noticeable degree and in fact has had an effect much further afield than the immediate borders of our own CPZ. When I come past Eden Park station each evening (on the same railway line as Clock House) it is noticeable that there are now more cars parked in the immediate area than there were before.

At the time of consultation, it seemed to me to be better to have residents' parking bays at kerbs where there were residencies (as has happened, but extending that beyond where the current CPZ stops), but leave completely free of parking restrictions those stretches of kerb where there aren't any house frontages (for example, much of one side of Cedars Road, some short lengths of Queens Road, Cromwell Road, Hampden Road and Forster Road). Thus residents' own parking would be protected, but there wouldn't be much in the way of displacement parking.

Cross-overs
Altering the 4.5 metre rule to 3.5 metre for front garden parking with a pavement cross-over would enable a large number of properties just outside the Clock House CPZ to qualify, to their obvious benefit. However, since a cross-over would mean that no one can park on the road just at that spot anyway, those residents may just as well have a CPZ parking bay which (a) is cheaper for the resident*, (b) is easier to park your car in and (c) allows you to keep your front garden, and thus maintain a general better-quality ambience of your neighbourhood. This ambience would be lost forever if each successive front garden became just a grim concrete/Tarmac/paved pan, and the view from your front window is principally a very close view of the side of your own car, a vehicle you have to edge around when you leave your front door.

* The cost of a drop-kerb pavement crossover, paid by the resident requesting it, is calculated individually due to a variety of factors being possible (so the Bromley Council website doesn't give a cost). A council surveyor pays a visit, and then you are given a quote. Even if a discount were to be offered for a 'bulk order' in one road, it will still be a good few hundred quid each household. Fifteen years ago the Council gave me a generous 'two for a bit more than one' deal... if I remember rightly, the going rate was over 400 quid per crossover then.