A parked car does not stop using the street just because its engine is switched off.
It occupies public space. And, increasingly, quite a lot of it.
Much of Barnes2050’s thinking about designing Barnes SW13 for people first, not cars has focused on movement around the peninsula: Hammersmith Bridge, School Streets and pedestrian pop-ups.
But there is another question:
What about cars when they aren’t moving?
A change introduced by Bath & North East Somerset Council offers one answer.
You could call it an ‘SUV charge’.
But it is better than that.
Welcome to Barnes2050, a place-based futures project asking: how do we help Barnes - the place and its people - thrive and be climate-ready by 2050? If this is your first visit, you might want to start here.
How much?
Bath now asks two questions about a resident’s car when calculating the price of a parking permit:
How much does it pollute?
How much street space does it occupy?
The first establishes the baseline price. Bath doesn’t simply distinguish between electric, petrol and diesel cars. The charge rises through a series of CO₂ bands: the more CO₂ a car emits, the higher the starting price. Diesel cars pay a further premium because of their impact on local air quality.
Then comes something more interesting.
Bath calculates the physical footprint of the car, its length multiplied by its width, using manufacturer’s measurements and including its extended mirrors.
Small cars get a discount. Bigger cars pay progressively more for their first permit.
An enormous electric car can pay more than a small electric car, even though neither produce exhaust emissions.
A second car attracts no small-car discount and a much larger size charge. Bath is putting a price on multiple-car ownership as well as pollution and size.
In case you are wondering, Bath says Blue Badge holders living in an affected area are entitled to a free permit and aren’t affected by these size charges.
Why is Bath doing this?
The council’s argument for these changes isn’t primarily climate-related. It’s about street space and safety,
To support public health and the safety of pedestrians, we already link the cost of parking permits to a vehicle’s emissions.
By also linking permit costs to the size of a vehicle, we encourage ownership of smaller vehicles that reduce risks for pedestrians and cyclists.
There is a reason this is becoming an issue. Cars have been getting bigger, says the council, and these bigger cars more popular,
SUVs became the most popular car type in the UK in 2024, accounting for over 60% of all new car sales, a significant increase from less than 50% in 2020.
Bigger cars consume more road and kerb space. They can make it harder to see and be seen. Their greater size and weight can also increase the consequences of a collision with someone walking or cycling.
Bath’s answer is to put a price on both costs: pollution and occupation.
The growth of SUVs has come despite warnings over ‘carspreading’. Research has shown cars have grown 1.2cm longer, 0.5cm taller and 0.5cm wider each year on average since 2000 and that buyers are undeterred by warnings that SUVs are more likely to kill pedestrians.
How does this works in practice?
The easiest way to understand the policy is with actual cars.
Start with three electric vehicles.
All three begin with Bath’s basic £120 emissions charge because none produces CO₂ from its exhaust. What changes the final price is their size.
That is a £67 difference between two zero-emission cars simply because one occupies considerably more street space.
Same emissions. Different footprint. Different price.
Now turn the experiment around.
Take these three BMW models with almost exactly the same physical footprint: an electric iX1, petrol X1 and diesel X1.
Their size charge is essentially the same, at about £28.
This time what changes the price of the parking permit is pollution.
In this case the £38 price difference is caused by exhaust emissions.
Same footprint. Different exhaust emissions. Different price.
Put the two examples together and Bath’s system becomes surprisingly simple:
Bigger cars pay more.
More polluting cars pay more.
If your car is both, you pay more for both.
Notes and thoughts
This feels particularly relevant to Barnes.
A people-first approach is not simply about making it easier to walk or cycle. It also requires us to ask a more awkward question:
How much public space does your car consume?
That matters in Barnes with its frequently narrow streets, constrained kerb space and high levels of car ownership.
A parked car is, after all, private property occupying public land.
Bath has decided that the price of doing this should partly reflect the nature of that occupation.
Barnes2050 agrees.
That is why it supports an SUV parking charge. Bath has devised something more sophisticated: a charge that distinguishes between the pollution a vehicle produces and the space it consumes.
That is a better model.
Political leadership
Bath consulted the public before introducing the change. The size-based proposal was not universally popular, but neither does the evidence suggest overwhelming opposition.
The consultation attracted 490 responses; 50% supported it and 44% opposed it.
There’s also a lively Bath Reddit discussion which is also not representative but useful.
Several highly upvoted comments strongly welcomed charging larger vehicles more because of space, safety and environmental impacts.
Others thought the additional sums were too small to change car-buying behaviour.
There were also objections from people saying they genuinely need larger vehicles — including one commenter describing needing a wheelchair-accessible vehicle.
Bath & North East Somerset Council, which has a Liberal Democrat majority, went ahead.
Between now and 2050, local politicians will encounter repeated opportunities to make decisions that may initially feel unfamiliar but which help places adapt to a changing climate.
This is one of them.
Richmond council should learn from its political colleagues in Bath and introduce a similar system across the borough.
If - when? - they do, they can return the favour by sharing their design of an ease to use online application form. The Bath council website is (unnecessarily) bad.
Is the price high enough?
This is where things become more interesting.
Our two electric examples suggest a Fiat 500e would cost roughly £110 a year to park, compared with about £177 for a Lotus Eletre.
Would someone spending £85,000 on a luxury electric car choose something smaller because the residents’ permit costs an additional £67 a year?
Perhaps not.
The difference may simply be too small to alter car-buying behaviour. Early discussion of the policy in Bath has raised exactly this issue. But that does not necessarily make the policy meaningless.
It establishes a principle: the amount paid for storing private property on a public street can reflect how much of that street the property consumes.
The model may prove more powerful than the price signal currently attached to it.
That deserves another story.
So does an even more fundamental question,
what should it cost to occupy a piece of public street in Barnes for a year?
My space in a bike hangar costs me nearly £72 annually. A residents’ car-parking permit can cost less, £68.50 in some Richmond control parking zones.
I have no beef with paying to store my bicycle there. The hangar has to be installed and maintained.
The interesting question is the other way round.
Why is storing a car on public land so cheap?
That is for later.
For now, Bath has done something worth watching.
It has begun to put a price not only on what a car emits, but on the space it occupies.
Continue exploring: Designing Barnes for people first, not cars
Barnes should be shaped around people living, working, playing and belonging, not chiefly around the movement and storage of cars.
More stories about designing Barnes for people first, not cars.