Carspreading charges begin in Bath
In an effort to address unfair allocation of road space to increasingly large cars and SUVs, and the road danger posed by such vehicles, Bath and North East Somerset Council will from today begin charging more for resident parking permits based on a vehicle’s footprint.
BathNES becomes the first UK local authority to implement parking charges aimed at reducing the use of larger cars and SUVs. Cardiff City Council approved plans in October 2025, but has yet to implement them.
The new parking charges apply a multiplier to a vehicle’s footprint, or length multiplied by width, with that multiplier increasing in bands, up to a maximum of 14.01m². Second cars are subject to an even higher multiplier to “reflects the added pressure that multiple-vehicle households place on limited road space”.
In public consultation, 50% of respondents supported the proposal for area-based charging, whilst 44% opposed it. Councillor Joel Hirst, Cabinet Member for Sustainable Transport Strategy, said: “These changes will help us manage parking in a way that supports road safety, sustainability and fairness for all road users. Research shows that larger vehicles like SUVs pose a greater risk to pedestrians and cyclists in collisions, with children particularly vulnerable. By introducing size-based permit charges, we are encouraging the use of smaller, safer and cleaner vehicles.”
The details
By targeting vehicle footprint, BathNES’s scheme differs from that approved by Cardiff City Council, which uses vehicle weight, a metric more directly associated with large cars and SUVs and more closely correlated with the road danger posed by the vehicle. However, vehicle footprint is an objective measure of how much a car contributes to congestion, or how much kerbside space it takes up.
As BathNES council admits, government data on vehicle dimensions is not reliable enough to implement the scheme, and so third party data is required. The same is true of data on vehicle weight.
Some further pros and cons of the scheme in our opinion:
Some respondents to the public consultation questioned whether area-based charges would unfairly penalise families, who may need a larger car because they have children.
At present the scheme includes commercial vehicles (N1 class) e.g. a tradesperson’s van. Paris initially included such vehicles and later exempted them after public criticism.
We are please, however, to see that all blue badge holders will be exempt from the new charges.
In summary
We are very pleased that BathNES has implemented the new area-based parking charges. The policy demonstrates leadership against carspreading and the growing problems of congestion and road danger that it causes.
Any policy that increased the cost of driving will be unpopular for many, and this scheme will undoubtedly need fine tuning once in action to ensure it works fairly for everyone. But the overall direction of travel is the right one: encouraging smaller cars and prioritising safer, fairer streets for all.