Car club spaces as transport mitigation

A car club space secured by planning condition is one of the least costly pieces of transport mitigation a developer can offer and one of the easiest to deliver badly. The idea is straightforward: if residents can book a shared car by the hour, fewer of them need to own one, so the scheme can be approved with less parking. Whether that works depends on three things the application often glosses over. Whether an operator will actually run a car from the site. Whether the bay can be delivered at all, particularly if it is on-street. And whether the location supports shared car use in the first place.

Councils in high accessibility locations accept the argument readily. Councils in low accessibility locations are sceptical, and usually right to be.

What a car club space contributes

The mitigation claimed is reduced private car ownership among residents, which translates into lower parking demand and fewer vehicle trips. In policy terms it supports a car-free or low-parking scheme, which is how most schemes use it.

The honest position on the evidence is that most published monitoring comes from operators and from authorities with established networks, and it is stronger for inner urban areas than for suburban or edge-of-settlement sites. Transport for London has published research on car club use in the capital, and some authorities publish their own monitoring. Cite whichever applies to your area rather than asserting a general figure, because an unsourced percentage in a transport statement invites the officer to discount the whole argument.

Where a car club is credible, it does something a parking contribution cannot. It gives residents an alternative at the moment they would otherwise buy a car, which is the first year of occupation.

On-site bays against on-street bays

The two arrangements are not interchangeable and the delivery risk is completely different.

An on-site bay sits within the development, is in the applicant's control, and can be delivered as part of the works. It is secured by condition, shown on the approved layout, and maintained by the management company. Its weakness is accessibility: a bay in a gated undercroft that only residents can reach serves fewer members, which makes it less attractive to an operator, because operator viability depends on how much the car is actually used across a wider membership.

An on-street bay is more useful to the operator and far harder to deliver. It needs a traffic regulation order made by the highway authority under the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984, with its own statutory consultation, and the highway authority is not the applicant. The land has to be public highway, which is not always obvious from the title plan, as our note on checking the extent of the public highway explains.

That difference should be reflected in the drafting. A developer can be obliged to deliver an on-site bay. On an on-street bay the obligation has to be to fund the order and to use reasonable endeavours, with a fallback if the order fails, because an undertaking to deliver something only the council can authorise is unenforceable in practice.

Operator agreements and who carries the risk

No operator will place a vehicle where it will not be used. On a development of twenty flats in a suburb with no existing network, the operator's answer is usually no, whatever the planning obligation says.

Where an operator is interested, the commercial structure typically involves one of the following. The developer funds the bay, the charging point and the signage. The developer underwrites the vehicle's income for an initial period, so the operator is protected while membership builds. Residents receive free membership and a driving credit for a defined period. The management company takes responsibility for the bay, enforcement against misuse, and liaison with the operator.

Get a letter of intent or a heads of terms from an operator before the committee date. An application that names the arrangement and attaches evidence of operator interest is in a much stronger position than one that offers a bay in the abstract.

Plan for withdrawal. Operators consolidate, exit areas and change models. A well-drafted obligation requires the space to be kept available for car club use and to be offered to an alternative operator, with a mechanism for what happens if none can be found after a stated period, rather than requiring a specific company to operate in perpetuity.

Securing the space and its continuation

A workable package usually splits between condition and obligation.

The condition covers the physical provision: the bay shown on the approved plans, marked and signed, with an electric vehicle charge point, provided before first occupation and retained thereafter. Charge point provision also engages Approved Document S of the Building Regulations, so coordinate the two rather than treating the car club point as separate.

The obligation covers the money and the continuation: funding for the traffic regulation order where the bay is on-street, the membership and credit package for residents, any income underwriting, a covenant to keep the space available for car club use, and the monitoring arrangements. Those last ones belong with the Travel Plan, and the fee for monitoring them should follow the authority's published approach, as covered in our note on travel plan monitoring fees and review triggers.

Two drafting traps recur. An obligation requiring the space to be provided before occupation of the first dwelling, where the bay is on-street and the order will take longer than construction, blocks occupation for reasons outside the developer's control. And a covenant running in perpetuity on a space that can be released by deed of variation is better than one with no release mechanism at all.

Evidence on use, and honest monitoring

If the car club is part of the justification for reduced parking, the monitoring should test whether it is working rather than whether it exists.

Useful measures are membership take-up among residents, how often the vehicle is booked, and resident car ownership from the travel survey. A Parking Survey of the surrounding streets before and during occupation tells you whether reduced on-site parking has displaced demand onto the kerb, which is the outcome neighbours complain about and the one a council will test at any subsequent application.

Build a response into the plan. If take-up is low after two years, the options are a second vehicle, a different vehicle type, a stronger membership incentive, or an acceptance that the mitigation has not delivered and that other measures have to compensate. Setting those out in advance is more credible than a plan that assumes success.

When a car club is not a credible substitute for parking

Be realistic about this, because an unconvincing car club offer damages the rest of the transport case.

A car club is a weak substitute where public transport accessibility is low and a car is needed for most journeys, where the development is family housing with multiple regular trips per household, where no operator serves the area and none is likely to, where the walking distance from the furthest dwelling to the bay is long, and where the scheme is small enough that demand will never support a vehicle.

In those situations the better arguments are different: a genuine assessment of demand through a Transport Assessment, realistic parking provision, cycle parking that people will use, and a contribution to a specific local improvement. Offering a car club space because it is inexpensive, in a location where it cannot work, reads as box-ticking.

The uncertainty worth acknowledging is how durable the model is. Car club operation has changed considerably over the past decade, and obligations drafted around a single operator's business model have aged badly. Draft for the function rather than for the company, and the obligation will still make sense in ten years.

This is general guidance rather than legal advice. Check the position with your local planning authority and highway authority or a qualified professional before relying on it.

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