How to win in the race for space

Ditch the rose garden - parking forecourts have become a must-have in cramped cities, says Christopher Browne

Peter and Antonia Sievewright are your typical two-car, two-child suburban family. Peter is a civil servant and Antonia works part-time in a restaurant and looks after their four-year-old son and baby daughter at the couple's three-bedroom terrace in Twickenham, south-west London.

The Sievewrights recently had a loft conversion, which they use as a fourth bedroom and utility area, while at the back of their house is a lawn and play area the children often use in the spring, autumn and summer months. It's a typical family home. Parking, however, is a nightmare.

"I frequently arrive home in the late afternoon and find nowhere to put the car as the road outside has been taken by local residents' vehicles," says Antonia. "The children are often tired and upset by then, and getting them from car to front door can be a real struggle." Some days, when the parking is particularly dire, she has to leave the family car 200 metres away.

One day, the Sievewrights had an idea. "We noticed that our next-door neighbour had converted his front garden into a parking forecourt. As ours consisted of little more than a pathway and a few rose bushes, it seemed the obvious solution to our problem," says Peter. So the couple contacted the local council, which soon gave them planning consent.

They then recruited a builder, who spent three weeks transforming their former front garden into a neat brick-and-paving-covered parking space. The finishing touches were added by the council, which carved a pavement kerb-drop to give the Sievewrights smoother access.

The forecourt cost £3,000, plus £600 for the drop and £75 for the council planning fee. A more basic concrete version would set you back around £2,000 inclusive, while a two-car horseshoe-shaped carriage driveway with surrounding flowerbeds costs upwards of £8,000.

Faced by streets with dwindling spaces and new developments with few if any places to park, more homeowners are now following the Sievewrights' lead. Paul Fincham, a spokesman for Halifax group, the UK's largest lender, says: "Parking spaces are at such a premium that a forecourt is as important as an extra bedroom now."

Though some authorities, like the Sievewrights' Richmond and Twickenham borough council, allow you to create a forecourt with simple planning consent, others have stricter rules. In Camden, north-west London, where parking, or lack of it, has almost become a political issue, the council has ordered that a house's boundary must lie 4.8m from the pavement's outer edge and have no parking zone spaces or sight-line hazards like trees outside it.

Adds Fincham: "Parents with young children are always ferrying them to and from playgroups, schools and shops. For them and any family who has a relative with a mobility problem, nearby parking is crucial, but if your home is near a school, you may find your street taken up by parents picking up and dropping off their children."

Mortgage broker David Hollingworth of London & Country, who lives in the centre of Bath, certainly knows about the agonies of finding a parking space. "I often have to tour the streets around my home to find somewhere to park when I get home in the evening, even though I have paid for an annual parking permit," he says.

You may find your own residents' parking bay is no-go area, too. Peter Ford, residential sales director of Townends, the London and Home Counties estate agents, says: "Bay problems are worst in central London. Sometimes you end up driving round the block for 20 minutes or more when yours is full - very unpleasant if you've just picked up £100 of shopping and have to drag it 100 metres to get to your house. A forecourt is the answer, particularly as many of today's front-gardens are poorly looked after."

It's also an excellent selling point. Jonathan Hewlett, head of FPD Savills' London residential group, says: "If you live in a London congestion area a parking space at the front could add £100,000 to the price of your house."

But that extra bit of space has another, more unexpected, benefit. "If you've been a bit lazy and not bothered to remortgage recently, putting down a parking forecourt or adding a garage to the side or back of your house would give you an excellent excuse to do so," adds David Hollingworth.

So let's look at the figures. If you have a £200,000, 25-year interest-only mortgage at 5.75 per cent which costs £958 a month, you could remortgage and raise an extra £10,000 for a forecourt or garage on a 25-year interest-only tracker at 3.65pc for £639-a-month - a saving of £319pm or £3,828-a-year. Perhaps it's time you too joined the space race.