Indeed - its a growing problem where I live in semi-rural Royston in North Hertfordshire, and I too have seen how bad it can get in the West Country when I'm on holiday each year.

To me, the problem is everyone's fault:

A typical family household has probably two cars for mum and dad (my parent generation tended to have just the one), and when thei two kids grow, up, both of them will have a car, and, more importantly, will not move out into their own place anywhere near as soon as their parents did, because of affordability issues.

Most average sized homes don't have the parking on their land for four car, most only (like my parents' house) for two or two plus a garage which isn't large enough to house many modern cars or is practical to do so with so many in the household coming and going all day.

This is even worse because of the combined issue of the above and people living in older accomodation that was never designed for the car-owning generation (e.g. terraced housing or flats), or as I'm finding out, new properties built since 2000 are deliberately designed to have less and less parking because of (well-intentioned, but ill thought out, in my view) national and local policies to try and 'encourage' people to walk, cycle or use public transport.

Where I live (the development was built between late 2002 and mid 2004), all flats have one allocated parking space; some houses (even some 4-bedhouses) also have one space, the rest of the houses (2, 3 and mostly 4-deb town houses) have just two allocated spaces.

The developments (unadopted) roads are deliberately narrow to STOP on-road parking, and visitor spaces are limited to one per 5 homes. We have to use parking control firms because some people have many more cars (or commercial vehicles that are too big) than allocated spaces, the council bin crews threatened to stop collecting because they couldn't get round because of wrongly parked cars on the roads, plus we are near the local station. Please still need a car in such areas because public transport cannot reasonably and easily take them everywhere and in all circumstances.

Local councillors all swear blind they voted against the development being built as plan, but I never recall it going to some Sec of State etc to over-ride them.

For them, it means the developer gives them some nice cash for 'local amenities, the council gets us to pay full council taxes but WE pay for all teh developments road, street light and communal park maintenance, as well as the electric bills for the lights. To me (as a flat owner), that costs me over £100pa more than if the roads etc were adopted. Its now OUR problem, not THEIRS. Overspill parking gets dumped on local roads (to the constenation of the local residents) outside the development.

At least they've changed their policy locally so that all 2-bed properties have two spaces, not sure about the larger ones with more bedrooms though. London and other cities have gone the other way in trying to force people not to own a car at all. It really depends on what you need it for and whether genuine alterantives are in place for all circumatances.

In more rural areas, especially holidaying areas, many cottages never designed with cars in mind (too old, obviously) regularly get let as holiday accomodation, often to multiple people/couples/families, which means more than one car.

Very little, if any road space for them, and often means that visitors (like me) to these areas have nowhere to park, because the Council car parks are just not large enough in the holiday season or when a big event is on in the area. Such facilities are also low down on the priority list of councils generally. Most also have poor public transport links and thus you HAVE to use the car. Pollution in such areas can be bad as well, esepcially in summer.

Some areas (including those with older homes, including in my home town) are so awash with cars, often parked half on the pavement (in order that the bin lorrie etc can actuall [but barely] pass) that you often have to walk in the road because there's insufficient room to walk on the pavement. Fine for me, not so good for the elderly, disabled or parents with young children.

As a nation, we (as usual) never planned ahead for this (which most of us could see coming 30+ years ago) and shut our eyes to this growing problem (sounds familiar, doesn't it?).