For many people, the introduction of a residents' parking zone in their street is something to cheer about. It means they no longer have to fight it out with commuters and shoppers for the privilege of being able to park outside their own house.
But hefty hikes in the amounts people must pay for their parking permits are fuelling suspicions in some quarters that "controlled parking zones," or CPZs, are less about relieving residents' misery and more about making money for councils. Some campaigners claim that with local authorities forced to keep their council tax rises in check, some are using residents' parking schemes as a "stealth tax" to boost their coffers.
A Guardian Money investigation has uncovered huge variations in the cost of permits, and for the visitor passes people must also buy if they want friends, relatives and tradespeople to be able to park nearby. It also confirms what many will have suspected: that the march of CPZs across Britain's urban landscape has been relentless.
On April 30, the London borough of Islington will become one giant controlled parking zone when the last remaining area currently without parking controls - Hillrise East - gets a CPZ. "Once that is in place, all public highways in Islington will be protected by a CPZ," says a spokeswoman for the borough, which charges £95 for a typical annual residents' permit.
Meanwhile, Edinburgh, a city well-known for its parking pressures, is introducing a number of controlled zones. Last month saw zones begin operating in Morningside, Merchiston and Greenhill as part of a programme that began in September last year. And an expansion of residents' parking is now under way in Brighton city centre.
But some argue that once your street is in a controlled zone, there's no going back, and you are at the mercy of your local authority, which will tap you up for ever-increasing amounts of cash.
This week, residents of the London borough of Waltham Forest were hit with a 50% increase in the price of their annual parking permits, and a trebling in the cost of visitor permits. Until Monday, it cost £30 a year for a resident living in a controlled area to park their car in the street; now it is £45. Meanwhile, the price of a book of 10 five-hour visitor permits has jumped from £7 to £21. That's £4.20 for one day's parking (two five-hour permits) - which adds up to a lot if, say, your mum regularly drives over to babysit while you are at work, or you regularly have tradespeople in.
A council spokesman says this is the first rise in permit costs for two years, and adds: "The vast majority of people are not covered by CPZs. The only people who are going to object to it are the people who live in those areas." So that makes it all right, then.
Another London council, Wandsworth, hiked the cost of its annual permits from £66 to £75 on April 1, with some daily visitor permits going up from £1.20 to £1.50 each.
Meanwhile, a growing number of authorities are bringing in schemes that will force owners of the most polluting cars to pay much more for their permits.
Many people will have little sympathy for those motorists being clobbered, particularly if it makes them think twice about having a second or third car. But even if you don't own a car, if you live in a CPZ, you will usually still have to buy visitor permits. In some areas, less well-off residents say it means they have to ask the doctor and other callers to visit in the evening, after the restrictions have ended.
Contrast the approaches of Waltham Forest and Islington (which charges £18 for a book of 10 three-hour vouchers) with that of Sutton in Surrey, where all households within a CPZ are entitled to 200 hours of free visitor parking per year. And in Salisbury, Wiltshire, daily visitor vouchers cost just 20p each.
Here are some of our other findings:
· Essex is a good example of the "CPZ lottery" in practice. If you live in one of Basildon's zones, you pay just £13.50 a year to park your car. In Chelmsford it's £18. But if you live in Saffron Walden, you must cough up £70, and in Colchester, £50. Critics say the costs of policing all these zones cannot really be so markedly different.
· Norwich council takes the view that bigger cars take up more room and should therefore pay more. It charges £16 for an annual permit but is considering raising this to £22 for "medium cars" such as the Ford Focus, and £30 for "large cars" such as Vauxhall Vectras. Owners of small cars such as Ford Fiestas would carry on paying £16.
· Kensington and Chelsea (another borough that is one big CPZ) plans to become the first local authority in London to offer "specialised resident permit-only motorcycle bays" later this year, to cater for the surge in demand for bike parking since the introduction of the congestion charge. But that means the cost of a standard motorbike permit will jump from £18 to £50 to cover the increased costs and improved security measures.
It is no surprise to discover there are websites devoted to the thorny topic of residents' parking. One, cpz.org.uk, claims many councils "have an agenda to extend controlled parking zones". It points out that CPZs do not guarantee you a parking space and claims that, rather than alleviating problems, they reduce the total amount of parking available. "If a road is laid out with yellow lines and parking bays, there are fewer opportunities to park legally. The total amount of parking space is reduced."
Parking schemes have to be self-financing; they cannot be funded from council tax. Any surplus income has to be spent on improving public transport or the highway network. However, Matthew Elliott at the TaxPayers' Alliance says many people suspect that councils are using parking controls "as a stealth tax to raise more money from residents who are locked into their local area".
Councils say CPZs are only introduced where a majority of local people have voted in favour of them, and that as well as freeing up spaces for residents, they play an important role in reducing the numbers of dumped cars on our streets. "It is quite an effort for councils to introduce controlled parking zones," says the organisation London Councils.
London leads the way
Earlier this month, Richmond council in south-west London tripled the cost of residents' parking permits for the most polluting cars. The groundbreaking scheme, which sparked fierce debate when it was unveiled last autumn, is now being copied by other local authorities in the capital and further afield.
Richmond's new charges will see owners of vehicles with the highest carbon dioxide emissions charged up to three times what they have been used to paying, while the cleanest cars will pay less.
Lambeth council in south London plans to force owners of "gas guzzlers" to pay up to £200 for a permit - up from £50-£60 now. Owners of cars that cause the least damage to the environment would pay £30. And from Monday, Westminster residents with "eco vehicles" such as the Toyota Prius will be entitled to free permits.
Camden and Hackney are among the other local authorities that are going green on their parking policies. Camden council just loves CPZs. It says they have proved increasingly popular with residents, and the aim is to work with local communities "to introduce them to as many areas as is practical".
While most of us would probably applaud any measures that help reduce damage to the environment, some of those affected feel their councils are not being as upfront as they could be about the large sums of money that will flood into their coffers as a result. In January, a report in the London Evening Standard claimed some boroughs in the capital stand to make an additional £1m a year from the new green charges. It quoted the RAC Foundation which described some of the schemes as "revenue raising dressed up in a green smokescreen" - a charge rejected by the councils.