For some months Pam and I have been working with residents on a residents’ parking scheme for Hall Street, Ernest Street and Crescent Road in Cheadle (behind St Marys Church).

Residents asked for the scheme some time ago. The area is all terraced Victorian houses and, because it’s close to the village centre, people often have real problems parking near to their own houses. This is the situation residents’ parking is there to resolve.

In Stockport’s residents’ parking scheme, people can pay £20 a year for a permit for a car (or £1 a day for a visitor’s permit). That doesn’t guarantee a parking space, but it does allow you to park in the residents’ parking zone.

All residents have been consulted on the scheme and more than half have said yes (we feel this is important if we’re asking people to put their hands in their pockets – it shouldn’t be forced through against the wishes of residents).

There were some concerns from residents with the original proposals, principally that there wasn’t enough space allocated for permit parking – there are quite a few houses in the area that have no frontage onto the road at all.

On Tuesday the councillors agreed to give the permit parking scheme the go-ahead, and asked for an additional 88 metres to be added to the zone to deal with the concerns above.

Some residents of Brook Street are concerned that this may result in more cars parking along their road. That’s a fair concern – we’re very aware that parking restrictions often move cars around; it doesn’t make them vanish. In this case, we judged that the need of people around Hall Street to park near to their houses made permit parking worthwhile, and we’ll be looking closely at what happens on Brook Street and other local roads as a result.

Here’s a Google map showing the Hall Street area.

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