Postcode oddities and council slipups

Returning home from work on Friday, I found that my entire street is now permit holders only parking. The council had asked for our opinion on this, and posted planning permission, but I was sort of expecting some details of how to get a permit before the signs went up …

Phoning the council revealed that only the odd numbers in our street are eligible for a permit. For some reason our street has one postcode for the odd numbers, and another postcode for the even numbers (odd eh?). For some reason, despite the council asking our opinion on making the street permit holders only, they didn’t bother to include our postcode in the actual list of houses to send permit forms to.They couldn’t tell me why my house (and half of the street) were not eligible for permits, simply that only every other number appeared to be allowed to have one. It is not like one side of the street is eligible and the other isn’t, as the numbers alternate down one side of the street.

Thankfully driving down to the council offices and saying that all our neighbours had permits, so we wanted ours, seemed to convince the person behind the desk that this was enough to get one.

It is quite a relief to have a permit now, as the concept of having to park elsewhere because the council has evicted my car from the street I live on was quite annoying. It turns out the permit comes into effect on Monday, and with the restrictions removed from one side of the road there should be plenty of parking spaces from now on (the big scary signs at the end of the road seem to have been keeping people away all weekend too)