The 2021 Census has shown a further big increase in the numbers of households with three or more vehicles in the London Borough of Ealing. This is often enabled by using the entire front garden for parking.
Forty years ago, there were only around 2,000 households with three or more cars or vans. By the most recent Census there were 5,749. Numbers of households with four or more vehicles are rising even faster (see chart).
Since 1995, when John Major’s government allowed pavement crossovers to be permitted development, people have been able to turn their front gardens into car parks.
Parking in the front garden rather than the road means householders can:
- have more vehicles, all parked outside the front door (but denying that frontage to on-street parking);
- have larger vehicles: SUVs and 4x4s are heavily marketed, and the largest of them are over five metres long;
- avoid parking charges and charge all their electric vehicles overnight at the same time.
But this comes at a massive cost to the neighbourhood and the wider environment – greater flood risk, heat island effect, biodiversity and pollinator loss, air and water pollution, loss of green space and aesthetic appeal (see Keep front gardens green).
This is a lethal cocktail for front gardens. Just about very square inch is being turned over to car parking and completely paved over, it’s all entirely legal and Government is completely ignoring the problems.
Ealing Front Gardens Project
