The Round Hill Society

No Room To Park

On 9th June 2010, members of Brighton and Hove City Council’s Planning Committee refused Carelet’s application (no ) to build 6 three-storey houses on the greenfield site (to rear of 67-81 Princes Road).

The grounds for refusal, which we are now asking residents to defend by participating in the developer's Appeal, are :
1) Failure to meet travel demand (parking)
2) Over development
3) Detrimental Impact on future occupiers due to the proximity to the Hollingdean depot.

Click HERE to find Carelet's Appeal and COMMENT ONLINE.
Information in this column may prove useful in defending the first ground for refusal: 1) Failure to meet travel demand (parking)

An alternative Community Parking Survey, carried out by local residents, lends support through empirical data to the arguments contained within the proforma (Microsoft Word:) we produced in our campaign to get Application BH2010/00083 refused.

Princes Road's 1 in 12 hill where extra parked cars would create a dangeous bottleneck. If every area was fully parked all the time, cars would not be able to exchange parking spaces.
Hiding away the transport implications
in an obscurely labelled report
It is not surprising that the parking surveys and reports are consistently hidden away in Carelet's planning applications where the label Supporting Document(s) Technical Report Part 05 does nothing to identify the on-street parking survey contained in Appendix C. All the supporting documents labelled Technical Report in fact deal with the transport & parking implications of Carelet's proposal - one of the main concerns of local residents.

The parking survey offered on behalf of the developer at Technical report part 05 Appendix C does not measure the current problems of on-street parking at their peak and considerably overestimates the availability of Legal/Safe parking in the Princes Road area.

Community Parking Survey
Residents in the area have conducted a community parking survey to challenge what is being claimed by the developer. Our own calculations indicate that the transport requirements of the proposed development cannot be met by existing availability in the area.


The parking situation at 10pm on weeknights in July

Existing demand for on-street parking at peak periods, especially in the late evenings and overnight, already leads many drivers to park in unsafe or unsuitable positions such as blocking pavements or on junctions or yellow lines. This factor, which was not taken into account in the survey provided by the developer, illustrates the lack of suitable parking space.

Full results
Within 200m of the site entrance

Date	Time	Free spaces	Unsuitably parked
______________	________	____________	______________
Wed 14 Jul	21:15	20	4
Wed 14 Jul	23:00	7	n/c
Thu 15 Jul	21:00	12	6
Thu 15 Jul	22:00	7	n/c
Tue 20 Jul	21:40	14	7
Tue 20 Jul	22:00	10	8
Wed 21 Jul	22:00	7	7
Thu 22 Jul	22:00	15	8

Between 200 and 400m of the site entrance

Date	Time	Free spaces	Unsuitably parked
______________	________	____________	______________
Tue 20 Jul	22:00	1	40
Wed 21 Jul	22:00	4	47
Thu 22 Jul	22:00	7	42

Download the full survey including photographs and details of our methodology and surveys.

Community parking survey (PDF, 764kb)

Developer's survey avoids measuring peak demand
12 noon on Wednesday 14th January 2009 is probably represents the time during the week when on-street parking is at its lowest. It is certainly irrelevant to perceived pressures. A second 8 pm survey is taken on the same day, but this is a weekday in mid January! Any Round Hill resident would know that peak pressures are at weekends. At more popular times of the year than mid-January, parking considerately becomes an impossible challenge as the supply of safe/legal parking places in Round Hill does not meet the demand.

The same Highways Department which continues to give the "thumbs up" to development proposals (such as Carelet's 5th planning application and the recent Ashdown Road proposal), warns Round Hill residents in its bid to introduce Residents' Parking schemes that if inconsiderate parking (e.g. around junctions, double or blocking pavements) continues, we can expect to see more yellow lines.

Developer's survey is out of date in a number of its claims
Appendix C prepared by Carelet's consultants, originally for their last application is already out of date. The developer refuses to consider the Controlled Parking Zone, shortly to come into force in The Viaduct Road area, a material planning consideration. It is not mentioned in their transport survey, yet it was known to be on the cards as early as June 2007 and 67% of respondents to a Council consultation (which closed on 18th July 2009) voted "YES" to it.

Carelet is offering a beat-survey, performed in January 2009 and recycled from a previous application for its most recent 2010 proposal.

Ditchling Road and Ditchling Rise, where a few unoccupied on-street parking spaces were identified in the 12:00 study (above table), form the eastern and northern boundaries of The Viaduct Rise area. Its southern and western boundaries are Viaduct Road and Beaconsfield Road (the A23 into Brighton).

The decision to introduce residents' parking in The Viaduct Rise Area removes the claim that parking places there will be available to Carelet's prospective residents.

The Springfield Road area, also near to London Road Station area, also suffers from parking stress.

When the Viaduct Rise CPZ commence in September 2010, some predict that 30% of vehicles currently parked on-street in that area will need to look for parking elsewhere. It is thought that drivers looking for free parking will not go south (deeper into the centre of town) or west (towards the A23) but displacement is most likely to effect the "Springfield Road" and "Round Hill" areas, which have voted not to be extensions of the Viaduct Rise (London Road area) CPZ.

Appendix C also implies that there will be suplus on-street parking places available in Ashdown Road where a planning application has just been approved to convert one unit of accommodation into three flats and to build two extra houses. Also the conversion of the Victoria Public House (not in use when the survey in Appendix C was performed) to residential accommodation is going to create added demand, as are the displaced vehicles which will no longer be able to park freely in the streets to the west of Ditchling Road.

Appendix C still identies unoccupied legal/safe parking spaces in the vicinity of their application site:
(within 100M from the site) in Princes Road, Mayo Road and Crescent Road; (within 100M-200M away) in Mayo Road, Princes Road, Crescent Road, Richmond Road; (within 200M-300M of site) in Ditchling Rise, Princes Crescent, Crescent Road, Richmond Road, Ashdown Road; (within 300M-400M of site) in D'Aubigny Road, Ditchling Road, Roundhill Road, Belton Road, Princes Crescent, Wakefield Place, Roundhill Crescent, Ditchling Rise and Springfield Road.

The parking survey carried out in January 2009 on behalf of the developer:

1) fails both to quantify and factor in any vehicles which are double-parked or parked on corners or pavements

2) claims that there is surplus parking space in Ashdown Road or Wakefield Road, both streets in which pavement parking when residents return from work obstructs pedestrian access along the larger part of whole footways. The point at which pavement parking impedes the free flow of pedestrians, making the passing of the car dangerous, is reached when the gap left is less than between 1.4m and 2.5m (precise measurement is subject to the numbers of pedestrians). The advice of The Council's Principal Transport Planner with regard to Wakefield Road is to leave a minimum of 1.7m clearance, as there is a long section on the northern footway without suitable places for pedestrians to pass. 1.7m allows two wheelchairs or buggies to pass safely.

3) classifies as "Legal/Safe" a significant number of parking spaces around the junction of Princes Road and Mayo Road (e.g. 6 opposite the two sides of the corner house at 1 Mayo Road: see Technical Note Part 5 Appendix C Survey) which are "unsafe". Whether this 90 degree turning is thought of as "a bend" or "a junction", parking on it contravenes the safety advice given in The Highway Code. The issue of "legality" here hinges on whether parking would create an obstruction. The road at this point is so narrow that parking on both sides of the junction would block road access to service vehicles and/or larger emergency vehicles, as happens already when the recycling collection lorry has to reverse right back up to the junction of Princes Road and Crescent Road.
Obstructing roads and footways is illegal. Moreover, many pedestrians, including parents with buggies taking small children to school, cross the road on or near the 90-degree junction both to cut off the wider corner and because it is one of the places where squeezing between two walls of parked cars isn't usually necessary.

Carelet's consultants highlight the assumption (that it is safe to park in the vicinity of a 90 degree bend) in paragraph 2.5 of their Technical Report Part 01. This area already becomes over-parked at weekends and some nights during the week. Motorists choose the sharp bend when all safer spaces in the street are already taken. Carelet's extra demand (visitors and services as well as new residents' cars) would create a bottleneck which would result in frequent obstruction of the highway. This would create problems for emergency vehicles at night since Carelet's car owners would be sleeping nearer to the Coastways railway (2 storeys down and to the rear of the street's current building-line. It would be very difficult to summon them to move their cars.

What the planning inspectors say?
In the last Appeal Decision relating to Carelet's proposal for 6 three-storey houses and 2 two-storey houses, Roger Mather, agreeing with the inspector who dismissed Carelet’s first Appeal, found merit in the argument that inadequate on-site parking would lead to further on-street parking, in an area suffering a degree of parking stress. In paragraph 14, he observes that it is stretching credibility to suggest that there is sufficient on-street space to provide for travel demand for eight family houses, estimated at seven cars, based on one beat survey undertaken during the early hours, on one weekday in August. He continues: moreover, the Survey showed only 8 spaces available within 100m of the site. A further 16 were available within a 400m of the site. I think that would be woefully inadequate to mitigate the harm at other times, outside the holiday season, when demand would be expected to increase. IT flows from this that in the absence of controls to ensure a genuinely car free scheme, one Car Club space would be inadequate. Roger Mather concludes (paragraph 15) that without a guarantee that the development would be genuinely car free, it would be likely to exacerbate parking stress in the area, sufficient to warrant withdrawing planning permission. The requirements of Local Plan Policies TR19 and HO7 (b) would not be satisfied.

The 90 degree bend in Princes Road
The road closure at the SE end of Mayo Road (blocking off access via the east end of Richmond Road to Upper Lewes Road and Lewes Road) was an attempt to stop through traffic hurtling down Princes Road and around the very sharp bend at the bottom. The ‘no-through-road’ sign at the summit of Princes Road, dissuades motorists who are strangers to the area from progressing down the 1 in 12 hill.

If Round Hill becomes a CPZ in the future, it is most unlikely that spaces on the 90 degree bend would be assigned as residents’ parking for reasons of safety.

Surveys conducted at 12 noon and 8pm would miss the fact that parking spaces to the east of Princes Road are time-shared between local residents and key-holders to the flight of steps providing pedestrian access to The Centenary Industrial Estate. Swop-over times are 7.30am to 9am and 5pm to 6pm.

Apart from the danger of the sharp bend, parking around it spoils the views between the ends of terraces. It is puzzling why some users of The Centenary Industrial Estate have been provided with 'a loophole' to planning policies which stipulate that parking space within the Industrial Estate should be for operational users only.

A 12-noon survey predictably finds less pressure on the dangerous NE corner where Carelet’s consultant has identified low parking demand. Motorists will usually park more safely if they have the choice, especially if space exists nearer to their houses. Periods of lower demand (such as midday!) allow this.

By 8 p.m. the area in the vicinity of the 90 degree bend has lost the Centenary Industrial Estate vehicles. However, it will fill up later as alternative parking spaces become scarce or non-existent. A weekend survey would demonstrate this better than a Wednesday survey. However, Carelet's parking consultants seem to be intent on claiming the most dangerous places to park in Princes Road as "unoccupied / safe parking spaces".

The reality is that the current dangerous and overburdened state of our street infrastructure would horrify organisations such as Living Streets which campaign for pedestrian access / streets where walking is possible, or The Royal National Institute of the Blind which collects statistics on visually impaired people who feel unable to walk to their nearest bus-stop because their streets have become too cluttered. Carelet's claim that there is adequate on-street parking for extra residents, is supported by a flawed study, which certainly does not impress.



This page was last updated by Dave on 27-Jul-2010