Category: Planning

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The Greater Cambridge Partnership has just released a set of FAQs about the residents’ parking schemes that it is introducing.

The FAQs appear to be generic.

And so it is likely that the answers given will also apply to us if/when we get included in the Hurst Park Estate residents’ parking scheme.

The questions are worth reading in full.

You can find them at: https://consultcambs.uk.engagementhq.com/gcp-york-area-parking/widgets/61706/faqs#question16711

Some are particularly pertinent to us on Arbury Road East – for instance, about on pavement parking and front garden parking if you don’t already have a dropped kerb.

You can see these below, and visit link above for all.

Please let us know if you have any issues, comments or queries that any of this raises for you.

Ian Cooper

Secretary, ARERA

What about parking on the footway alongside the road?

The Council receives a lot of complaints about parked cars blocking footways for pedestrians, pushchairs and wheelchairs. We cannot introduce a parking scheme that allows parking on the footway and forces vulnerable road users to walk in the road. The exception to this is in streets where such an arrangement is already in place and spaces have been formally marked as such.

Will we have to have signs and road markings in the street?

It is essential that drivers are aware of where they can and cannot park. Generally speaking, where parking is permitted, the areas will be marked out as white boxes with upright signs alongside. Where parking is not allowed, yellow lines are used. In some schemes it is not practical to mark out bays on the road. In such areas, there will be zone entry signs and repeater signs but no bay markings. These schemes are known as Permit Parking Areas (PPA).

How will the scheme affect the use of my private driveway?

You do not need a permit to park on your driveway or any other private areas of land.

If you have a constructed access with dropped kerbs, we will not mark a bay across it.

However, if you use your garden to park on and do not have dropped kerbs this is an unauthorised vehicular access, and we may allow parking across your frontage. In this situation, you may wish to consider applying for dropped kerbs. You can obtain more information here: www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk and enter Dropped Kerbs in the search bar.

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Letter in the Cambridge Independent : A ‘pre-emptive GCP strike’ on parking review

A ‘pre-emptive GCP strike’ on parking review

The Arbury Road East Residents’ Association has expressed concern about the Greater Cambridge Partnership’s (GCP) use of the consultations on the Milton Road parking schemes to launch a pre-emptive strike to strip Arbury Road East of its parking and turn the whole of Arbury Road into a de facto ‘urban clearway’ – even though consultation on the GCP’s Review of Road Classifications has yet to take place.


We know that this concern is shared by looking at the responses left in the comments book at the ‘consultation’ meeting held recently by the GCP at Chesterton Community College.

We have been warned that the GCP may seek to solve this ‘problem’ (of its own making) by removing Arbury Road East from the proposed Hurst Park Estate parking scheme.

We here put on record that the residents and businesses on Arbury Road East:

  • have not voted for Arbury Road East to be removed from this parking scheme
  • have not voted for the status of Arbury Road East, which is very narrow, to be changed from a residential street to a de facto ‘urban clearway’ by the addition of double yellow lines along both sides of the road
  • have not voted for all parking on Arbury Road East to be removed
  • have not voted for Arbury Road to lose its previously allocated status, as shown on maps issued by both the county council and the GCP, as a ‘designated priority cycle route’ along its whole length.


What the GCP is currently proposing will not improve the safety of those who live, work, shop and go to the schools located directly on Arbury Road or to the schools in the near vicinity.

The single painted advisory cycle lane shown on one side Arbury Road East in the GCP proposals is not compliant with the government’s 2020 requirements as set out in Local Transport Note 1/20. No provision at all is made for cyclists travelling in the opposite direction.

The GCP’s current proposals for Arbury Road will not help it achieve the 15 per cent reduction in motorised traffic in Cambridge that it has set as its objective.

We urge our elected representatives – Cambridge’s MP and the leaders of the county and city councils – to use their oversight to ensure that the GCP will not be allowed to use its Milton Road Parking Scheme, its Road Hierarchy Review, or any other mechanisms at disposal, to make undemocratic decisions about the fate of those who live on or use this road, as well as the neighbouring roads adjoining it.

Ian Cooper
Secretary, Arbury Road East Residents’ Association (arera.org.uk)