Eric Pickles appears to have done something sensible

Letting people rent out a car-parking space? Makes good sense.
I've got 2 spaces I could rent out, but don't suppose anyone wants to park in darkest deepest Devon.

Can't help but wonder if there are legal implications to this, though. What if the car gets stolen/damaged etc and money is changing hands?

To be on the safe side the householder should to inform his/her property insurer and the car owner his motor insurer.

Apologies for the surplus "to".

The article does state that 'homeowners are advised to draw up a contract detailing liability with motorists using the parking space, consider safety aspects and bear in mind that any income will be subject to tax.'

Wouldn't an written agreement between the owner and the user do for that? I mean, you wouldn't necessarily have to have a lawyer draw up a contract, would you?

If the owner specifies that parking in their drive is "at the parker's risk" and the parker agrees in writing to pay a certain sum per hour (or whatever), I don't see that for insurance purposes that's technically any different from parking your car on a street.

Yes, I assumed they meant that homeowners draw up a contract themselves - as long as it's clearly worded and signed by both parties I can't see that there should be a problem.

I wonder what local planners would have to say though. I started another thread on this. The day before he was having a go at LA parking charges and casting them in the role of evil profiteers (profit? It's called additional revenue if you are a hospital.) Here it is evil bureaucrats. Pickles casting himself as the champion of the hard done by motorists?
In a place like Brighton that has terrible parking issues, it is not necessarily going to help to reduce cost of parking, reduce amount of regulated parking or encourage people to concrete over their front gardens to rent them out.

I think Pickles is just jumping on a bandwagon. Schemes like this have been in existence for years. There are lots of websites where you can find/rent out a space, and they have driver/owner agreements and the legal bases covered.

If I remember what the article said correctly, he absolutely was not encouraging people to concrete over their gardens so as to be able to let out parking space. He was talking about letting someone park on your drive while your own car is not there during the day.

He may be jumping on a bandwagon, but if what the article reports is correct, it seems like a better bandwagon than the one councils are jumping on.

What local planners apparently have to say is that you need planning permission to let a different car from your own park on your drive. Please will someone explain to me why that isn't just silly bureaucracy

I note that none of the councils apparently involved were named, so how are we to judge the accuracy of the department's statement?

Good point.

So many drives standing empty during working hours and so many people struggling to find parking. It would work where we live but of course it will never get off the ground - too much red tape.

i just saw an advert for a drive today in the supermarket - quick work!

Yes this may be like the "local council bans Christmas festivities for PC/H and S reasons" stories. Would not be the first time a minister has done that.
He might not be encouraging the tarmacing of front gardens bags but the local planners might be concerned about impact - unitended consequences etc. Apparently when this happens a lot more water enters drains and can cause problems.

By "this" do you mean tarmaccing over gardens? A lot of which of course has already been done long before this parking idea came up. And yes, I know it means less water sinks into the ground and so has to go into the drains. That's been known for years.

Or do you mean letting someone park on your already surfaced drive, which wouldn't involve any more tarmac? I think that's what the rent a car parking space is about. The article mentions all this.

If it's a Pickles initiative there must be something wrong with it...

No one can be wrong ALL the time........can they ??

We all know he can be a twit, feetle, and usually is, but if what is reported here is correct, he seems to have a modicum of sense that has surfaced at least temporarily, and it appears to be the councils who want to behave stupidly in order to extract money from people rather than solve a parking problem.

Alarmist 'unintended consequences' aside, it looks like a straighforward, sensible idea.

Wanders off to ponder possible unintended consequences of letting someone park a car on an empty drive when it isn't being parked on by its owner while thinking how negative some people always seem to be.

Also thinking along similar lines, aka. Just because someone is right about something doesn't mean they'll be right about everything.

And vice versa.

Just speculating bags that there may be reasons why LA planners might not as keen as EP. Debating the issue.
I don't think though that this is an "idea" I think that these two things in a couple of days - "profiteering from parking" and "being bureacratic about renting drives" is EP is wading in trying to appear like the champion of "the motorist" while demonising LAs. As minister for LAs he does not usually seem to be very knowledgeable about local government.

What you have written about your suppositions on EP appear very negative to me, jess, as if the very fact that he is a Tory politician means he can do nothing with good or useful or just straightforward motives. Perhaps you are wise.

I hope the scheme works. Perhaps it is working already on a small scale. I just think it seems like a good community spirited idea, a bit like car-sharing, and I don't see why LAs need to be involved other than by a few bye-laws which may, in any case, already exist. e.g. I'm sure you need planning permission to tarmac over your front garden nowadays. You certainly did in the district of Oxfordshire that we left in 2006 and that had been the case for some years already. (No, we didn't want to tarmac over ours, but we knew people who did and who weren't allowed to).