Parking guidance for new developments

This guidance sets out Buckinghamshire Council’s (BC) approach to parking throughout the county, explaining how much parking new developments should provide for bicycles, motorcycles, cars and blue badge holders.

The standards aim to help ensure that all new developments provide the right amount of parking, wherever they are in Buckinghamshire. BC has worked alongside the four district planning authorities to ensure the needs of each district have been met.

Part 1 explains how we developed the standards and part 2 sets out the standards themselves.

The key aim of this guidance is to ensure that developers provide the appropriate level and type of parking for new developments. This will play a role in promoting sustainable development across the county by attracting businesses and economic activity; ensuring our towns and villages remain attractive places to live and visit; and ensuring our residents continue to experience a high quality of life.

The objectives of the standards are:

• to provide guidance that sets out appropriate number of parking spaces for new developments across the county - the standards have been designed to account for the variation in settlement types, from densely populated towns to small rural communities
• to reflect real-world demand for parking, to provide the parking that is really needed
• to allow flexibility to recognise that each development is unique and the standards cannot predict exactly what will be appropriate in all cases
• to encourage sustainable modes of transport by ensuring that appropriate levels of cycle and motorcycle parking are provided, and that this is secure and accessible

Encouraging sustainable transport remains an important objective for the council and will be pursued through a combined policy response as opposed to a solution based largely on parking supply constraint, which has proven to be of limited impact.

The parking guidance will:

• be the core parking guidance document for Buckinghamshire and will provide the basis for all future highways advice provided by the council in its role as highway authority
• provide a document that can be used by the four district councils (or suitably referred to in their emerging local development plans as deemed appropriate)
• allow sufficient flexibility for districts to consider the most appropriate way in which to adopt the Parking Provision Guidance locally
• be one document that has analysed both qualitative and quantitative issues, for example accessibility, size of spaces, and household size, among others

However, it is worth noting that the scope does not include the following:

• parking enforcement: BC (and district authorities) have a role in parking enforcement, and this has been considered carefully when developing the standards. However enforcement is not considered in detail, and is the subject of other policies and procedures
• charging for car parking
• detailed design criteria although basic design details have been included

Parking has a huge influence on Buckinghamshire’s people and places. Too little parking could hold back our economy, or cause people to park inappropriately – leading to congestion, compromising safety and threatening the beautiful places that make Buckinghamshire special. Too much parking takes up space that could be used more productively and makes places difficult to get around. Good provision for cyclists and motorcyclists is vital to encourage travel by these modes, and suitable (and sufficient) disabled parking for blue badge users is important in retaining mobility and independence. Therefore, we need parking standards that carefully balance these needs - to provide the right amount of parking for Buckinghamshire.

There are currently no countywide parking standards in Buckinghamshire. Instead, the county relies on those developed by the district councils. These vary considerably and were developed under the more restrictive national policies described in Section 1.2. The recent change to national policy described (see Section 1.2) gives us the opportunity to revise these to provide the right levels of parking in Buckinghamshire.

These new standards also allow us to look at how travel has changed and make sure the levels of parking we secure reflects what is happening in the real world. Between 2001 and 2011 car ownership in Buckinghamshire has increased by 14%, although car ownership per household has increased by just 7%, from 1.5 to 1.6 cars per household. As a result, there are now over 300,000 privately owned cars or vans in Buckinghamshire, and the county has the highest percentage of 3 or more car households in the south-east. The countywide parking guidance has taken these statistics into account, to ensure that the most appropriate level of parking is provided for both residential and non-residential developments.

Providing clear standards is also key to stimulating growth, whilst keeping the county special. It will help developers to understand what is considered an appropriate level of parking. This should accelerate the determination of planning applications, by ensuring that applications are submitted with appropriate levels of parking, allowing (appropriate) developments to get going with minimal delay.

In summary, parking standards are required to balance the many benefits and costs of parking. They will help to ensure we provide the right parking for Buckinghamshire today. The following section sets out the aims and objectives that allow the standards to meet these needs.