Residents' parking schemes help people who live in busy areas park near their house.
The area might be busy because:
You need to buy a permit for your area. The cost of the permit helps covers the costs of the scheme.
You will normally be allocated one permit per household, but you might be offered extra permits on a first come first served basis if they are not taken up.
Your permit lets you park for as long as you like at any time. Anyone without a permit can only park for a limited time - normally one or two hours, and at certain times of the day.
A permit is about £60 per year in Herne Bay and Whitstable, and up to £150 per year for central Canterbury. Permit prices are reviewed every year and might increase.
If your road is added to a parking scheme, then we have to mark out parking bays, put up the appropriate signs and get our enforcement team to control people parking that don't have a permit.
This all costs money, and it would not be reasonable to increase council tax across the district to pay for it.
Yes, but you must make sure you change the vehicle your permit is registered against in your online account before you park.
All vehicles will be checked against our permit system to make sure they're registered.
No. Blue Badge holders can park for as long as they like in residents’ parking bays without a permit.
We normally mark out yellow lines along all parts of the road that aren’t suitable for parking bays, like drives and junctions.
It might be possible to leave a gap in the lines across your drive so that you can park there, as long as there is no risk of causing an obstruction to traffic. However, this might mean other people park across it.
If parking bays are reserved then there is nowhere for other people to park.
Parking schemes are rarely successful if they have parking for permit holders only. This is because visitors, tradespeople or people visiting shops and businesses in the area need a place to park too.
You are not guaranteed a space outside your house with a permit, but you should be able to find a space in the zone.
We can only mark out parking bays where parked cars would definitely not cause problems for residents or other drivers.
This can mean fewer parking spaces; as when there are no restrictions, drivers sometimes park in places that are not appropriate, like on a corner - and so don't take up parking bays.
If you have visitors that need to park for longer than the time limit, you can buy visitor vouchers online which let them park for up to 24 hours.
Parking enforcement officers will carry out regular checks to make sure no one is parking where they shouldn't and that they haven't stayed past the time limit.
Anyone that isn't parking correctly might be given a ticket.
If a scheme is approved, signs will be put up to tell people they're in a residents' parking zone.
We try to put them up in a place that does not affect people that live there - this is normally the boundary between two houses, but sometimes we do have to put them outside a house.
You must return your permit. You cannot pass it on to the next person that lives there, and you cannot keep it for your own use.
You must speak to your neighbours first to make sure they want one.
If not all of them want it, or if you only want parking across part of the road, we are very unlikely to support it.
It can take several months to make a decision because we have to formally consult all residents, with any objections being considered by councillors before the changes can be legally made.
We also need to look at how the parking bays could be set out in the road.
You might find that more people park in your road because of restrictions in the new scheme. We try to avoid this happening by looking at the area rather than individual streets.