Noted on 15 Oct 2026

In Victorian London, a household that wanted a carriage first had to find somewhere to keep the horse. The better-off used the mews behind the house, on their own land and at their own cost, and plenty of them didn't bother and hired a horse and carriage from a jobmaster by the month instead. When cars arrived, they ended up living on the street for free, and as far as I can find, no Act of Parliament ever explicitly allowed it

In 1937 the Minister of Transport told the Commons that whether leaving a car on the highway was an obstruction was, "under long-established law", down to the circumstances of each case, and that there was "no proposal to amend the general law". Britain's first parking meters didn't arrive until July 1958, in Mayfair, at sixpence an hour, and residents' permits came later still. By then there were nearly 5 million cars on Britain's roads.

I think that free kerb did more for private car ownership than most of the policy we usually credit. A household with nowhere to keep a car could own one anyway, where in the horse era it would probably have hired.

Centre for London found in 2020 that renting a parking space in London cost around ten times an annual residents' permit, and some boroughs have charged car clubs over £2,000 for a single bay. So a shared car that replaces around 20 private ones can pay many times more for its space than any of those cars pays for a permit.

Roughly a third of UK households have no off-street parking. For people in that position in 1900, hiring was a common way to have a carriage. I don't think it should seem strange in 2026.

If you set parking charges for a borough, how does your car club bay charge compare with a residents' permit for the same stretch of kerb, and how was the difference arrived at?