Parking guidance for new developments

BC has developed this guidance in close consultation with the district councils. Officers have worked in cooperation with counterparts in the district authorities to ensure the standards meet their needs. This included a series of working group meetings facilitated by the council, and the sharing of comments on working drafts and methods. The following section explains how the standards were developed.

Previously, attempts have been made on both a national and countywide scale to reduce car ownership by adopting maximum parking standards. However, it is now widely accepted that restricting residential parking had little influence on car ownership - people still own cars, and are just forced to park inappropriately.

With this in mind, and considering the flexibility of the NPPF, we have now moved away from restraint-based parking standards. Instead we are introducing ‘optimum’ parking standards, which aim to reflect the right amount of parking to meet demand. Optimum is defined as providing the ‘best or most favourable point, degree or amount’. So the standards introduced in this guidance should be considered as the most favourable amount to create conditions for sustainable growth, without causing adverse effects through the under or over provision of parking spaces.

We have also provided flexibility for developers to provide the right amount of parking in situations where there is evidence that applying specific standards would not be appropriate. This flexibility acknowledges that parking standards need to be sensitive to local circumstances and concerns, and ensure parking restrictions do not encourage migration to other areas, or suppress development.

If a developer believes that the stated standard is not appropriate for the new development, the developer must produce sufficient evidence (such as through their transport assessment and/or travel plan) that a different level of parking would be more appropriate. It will remain the responsibility of the highway authority (the council) and relevant planning authority to decide whether the evidence is appropriate.

Equally, where the highway and/or planning authority believe the evidence suggests the standards would not be appropriate, they have the flexibility to request what parking is appropriate. For example, in town centres, parking should be considered as a shared resource. By encouraging shared use parking between neighbouring developments or using public car parks a different amount of parking may be appropriate in some places.