Council shutting our road, where to park?

[2Btoo]

Quickie:

We have off-road parking at our house. To park elsewhere locally requires a permit, which we don't have for any of our cars.

Out town council is proposing to close our road for a week to do some work on it. (I'm not quite sure what; a re-surface would be very welcome but hope springs eternal). During this time then we will have no vehicle access to our house.

Clearly we will need to move our cars from the house to a nearby street for the duration of the week, something I'm not very happy about. However the council has told us that there will not be any additional parking permissions for us during this period - i.e they won't be giving out permits to park. This means that either we can park about 2 miles away and walk, or we put up with getting parking fines on a regular basis.

We are clearly speaking to them about this but are there any legal precedents which could help us? Does anyone have any experience of this sort of nonsense elsewhere and any advice to give?

Thanks.

[normalbloke]

Just leave it in situ….

[A500leroy]

They have to maintain access to residents during the duration of the works, dont worry.

[scorcher]

Have some number plates made up which match a local councillors car and park where you want

[donkmeister]

2Btoo said:

Quickie:

We have off-road parking at our house. To park elsewhere locally requires a permit, which we don't have for any of our cars.

Out town council is proposing to close our road for a week to do some work on it. (I'm not quite sure what; a re-surface would be very welcome but hope springs eternal). During this time then we will have no vehicle access to our house.

Clearly we will need to move our cars from the house to a nearby street for the duration of the week, something I'm not very happy about. However the council has told us that there will not be any additional parking permissions for us during this period - i.e they won't be giving out permits to park.

What do you mean by off-road parking? To me this means parking away from the road e.g. driveways or car parks, but if it's something like bays that are tucked back from the road yet a part of the road then I can see how that would be a problem.

If it is driveways etc, they'll usually allow access. When my road was done this was the approach they used. They warned that there might be delays if you need to wait for a machine to finish doing its thing outside your offroad parking.

However, if your off road parking is part of the road, then you really need to get someone from your council highways department to come and see it for themselves. From experience, they often don't even look at Streetview so may be working on the assumption that the street situation is different from what they expected.

[2Btoo]

A500leroy said:

They have to maintain access to residents during the duration of the works, dont worry.

Thanks. Are you entirely sure of this? Is there legislation to enforce it?

Logically I can think of situations where the road and hence vehicular access HAS to be suspended but good sense says that alternative provision for parking should be made.

(We've been told that there will be continued pedestrian access, it's only the vehicular access that is being suspended.)

[2Btoo]

donkmeister said:

What do you mean by off-road parking? To me this means parking away from the road e.g. driveways or car parks, but if it's something like bays that are tucked back from the road yet a part of the road then I can see how that would be a problem.

Private driveway and garages. All entirely on our land but accessed by a public road, hence the problem.

[georgeyboy12345]

Just go on holiday for a week.

[mrsshpub]

A500leroy said:

They have to maintain access to residents during the duration of the works, dont worry.

Really? When a water main at the end of our road was repaired earlier this year, all the residents were advised to move their cars to somewhere the other side of the repair site, if they wanted to use them while vehicular access was cut off. That meant parking our cars in neighbouring streets & friends' driveways.

[donkmeister]

2Btoo said:

donkmeister said:

What do you mean by off-road parking? To me this means parking away from the road e.g. driveways or car parks, but if it's something like bays that are tucked back from the road yet a part of the road then I can see how that would be a problem.

Private driveway and garages. All entirely on our land but accessed by a public road, hence the problem.

I think insisting that someone from the council Highways dept comes and sees the problem is the way to go then.

Have a look at your local council website and find out when they have public meetings too, it's a good forum to bring topics to the attention of the councillors if you aren't having any luck with the council themselves. These days you can usually attend via Zoom or similar too. Sounds like you've got a handle on the problem as well as a reasonable solution, they love that as it makes work easier for them.

[2Btoo]

Thanks Donks. FWIW the local councillor is very much on side and being very helpful indeed, but seems to be struggling to get sense out of the council as much as I am. This post was more to find out whether there is precedent or legislation to cite, or whether anyone else has had this problem before.

Thanks again for the input chaps.

[nd0000]

It might not be as disruptive as implied. We recently had our street resurfaced. Although the advertised duration of the works was a couple of weeks, because they worked their way down the road and packed away in the evenings the period where no one could access or park was fairly minimal.

[OutInTheShed]

I'd find out exactly what the work is.
It may be they don't need the whole road shut at once, for the whole week.
In fact it's hard to imagine what would require that.

We had a road closure in our old road, for the water company.
They put steel plates over the trenches so we had access overnight, and were prepared to do that in the day if needed for example by an ambulance.

[speedchick]

OutInTheShed said:

I'd find out exactly what the work is.
It may be they don't need the whole road shut at once, for the whole week.
In fact it's hard to imagine what would require that.

We had a road closure in our old road, for the water company.
They put steel plates over the trenches so we had access overnight, and were prepared to do that in the day if needed for example by an ambulance.

We've just had that with gas mains, although their vehicles were everywhere they were happy to move to allow us on the drive.

[Sticks.]

nd0000 said:

It might not be as disruptive as implied. We recently had our street resurfaced. Although the advertised duration of the works was a couple of weeks, because they worked their way down the road and packed away in the evenings the period where no one could access or park was fairly minimal.

Similar here. Access was allowed for residents other than to the section which was being worked on at the time.

[PF62]

mrsshpub said:

A500leroy said:

They have to maintain access to residents during the duration of the works, dont worry.

Really? When a water main at the end of our road was repaired earlier this year, all the residents were advised to move their cars to somewhere the other side of the repair site, if they wanted to use them while vehicular access was cut off. That meant parking our cars in neighbouring streets & friends' driveways.

And I have seen the opposite.

Sewer outside my parents home needed emergency work for a week closing the road to about 20 properties.

The council built a temporary route for cars by removing concrete bollards at a dead end at the other end of the road and creating a tarmac ramp up and over the pavement to allow cars to drive over.

All depends on the local council.