A couple who swapped their car for a cargo bike are taking on Bristol City Council after officials ordered they remove two planters they were using to create their own parking space on a public road outside their home.
Anna and Mark Cordle have been told that enforcement action would be taken against them if they don’t remove the heavy planters from their road in Redfield - and the couple have told Bristol Live they won’t do that, and in return have lodged a formal complaint against the council.
The couple say they have the support of more than 50 of their neighbours, and point out that the kind of thing they’ve done unofficially is exactly the sort of thing the council is proposing to do as part of the Liveable Neighbourhood proposals in their area.
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The couple decided to swap their car for a big cargo bike more than a year ago. The large container on the front is big enough to carry their three young children all over Bristol, but it’s too big to fit in the door of their small terraced home. With nowhere else to park it securely, the couple hit upon an unusual DIY solution.
In the spot outside their home where they had previously been parking their car, they placed two large green containers filled with soil and plants - and that was heavy enough to be able to secure their bike to, and sturdy enough to withstand any bumps from nearby parked cars.
Before they installed their DIY solution, they asked as many people in their street and two neighbouring streets as they could if anyone minded, and say they had unanimous backing and also consulted with one of their local councillors.
The area they are using takes up less than a parking space on the road near their home, and for more than a year the couple have been using the little area they’ve created to park their big bike.
Then, on Saturday, a man from Bristol City Council’s Neighbourhood Enforcement Team knocked on their door, informing them that there had been a complaint, and demanded they move the planters. A follow up letter claimed the council officer had ‘received complaints’ from the public that ‘the planters are causing obstruction/danger to highway users’.
The letter told them: “Your placing of the planters on the highway is in breach of Section 149 of the Highways Act. Please remove the planters urgently and ensure that they are not replaced on the highway at any time. You may also wish to consider that if any person has an accident has a result of your planters being on the highway, it will be you who will be liable for meeting any compensation claim.”
The letter then added that the council had the power to remove the planters if the Cordles didn’t.
Anna Cordle said the couple had thought long and hard about what to do about the bike once they decided they wanted to switch, but said they discovered there was no process for asking the council for permission to store it securely on the road. She pointed out that if it was a car, they could leave it in the same spot without ever moving it for years.
“We explored all the options for how we could store it securely - but we live in a terrace, with no front garden to speak of,” she said. “The only option for us was to park the bike - our car replacement - where we used to park the car, on the road. And, for security and insurance, we needed to get something heavy and secure to lock it to, so we placed bike planters in the road to lock the bike to.
“We sought out ways we could seek permission for what we were doing - but there were none. We consulted with our neighbours, those who would have most claim to be affected, and received a positive response, so went ahead. It has been transformative to our ability to get around without adding to Bristol’s poor air quality and carbon emissions,” she added.
“After more than a year of them being in the road with nothing but positive responses, the council are now siding with anonymous complaints that the planters are an obstruction/danger on the highway and have sent us a letter telling us to remove them and threatening further enforcement action.
“Without them, we would have no way of storing our cargo bike without causing far greater obstruction to the pavement (locking it to lampposts or in front of our house). We would probably need to get a car,” she added.
The rules around the road in residential areas is fairly clear - as anyone who has tried and failed to stop other people parking in the spaces outside their homes has discovered. No one has any right to the road outside their home - unless it’s been designated as a parking space for a specific disabled resident - and it’s only moveable vehicles or temporary obstructions like skips or scaffolding that can be placed on the road.
The Cordles say their situation highlights how the law, and the council’s interpretation of it, favours car ownership over people who cycle. “We are saying no, we will not remove them,” said Mark Cordle. “They do not obstruct free passage on the highway, and we deny that they are any more a danger than other street infrastructure. We want them to stay.
"Our street wants them to stay. It’s better for all of the council’s objectives, for all of Bristol's residents, for the climate and for air quality, that it stays,” he added.
The couple have submitted a formal complaint against the council in a bid to try to get the issue looked at in more detail, and they acknowledge that they do not own that space and can’t commandeer it for their sole use. “We don’t like the disparity of it, and wish our neighbours could also reliably park near their homes,” said Anna Cordle. “But it is the council’s role, not ours, to facilitate that.
“We of course don’t claim to own the road, and would be very content with council-provided infrastructure on the street - but that is not coming any time soon. It wouldn’t have to be outside our house, but it wouldn’t have made sense for us to put it in front of somebody else’s house on the street,” she added.
“Nobody owns the road, but also everybody does - not just car users. Saying cargo bike parking infrastructure needs to be dismantled to provide another space for a car to park would be telling us we can’t share in this public asset if we don’t own a car,” she said.
“There are examples that demonstrate the principle that recognising the needs of private individuals do actually result in the reservation of street space. The space in front of driveways are ‘sectioned off’, albeit invisibly, to facilitate private access to properties. The specific needs of disabled residents are accommodated through sectioning off a part of the road through street markings, reserving street space for them to park in. The specific needs of users of cargo bikes - a need for secure on-street infrastructure - should also be accommodated, or at the very least not denied,” she added.
“We believe there ought to be a process whereby we and others could do this in a way explicitly authorised by the Council and incorporated officially into the street scene - but no such process exists at the moment,” she said.
There is a scheme in Bristol for bike hangars to be installed in parking spaces on the side of residential streets. While places like Walthamstow in London have at least one bike hangar in every street, there are only a handful in Bristol, and successful bids to have them need a group of residents to come together to apply and promise to use them.
In April this year, plans for Bristol to massively expand the scheme to install 1,000 new bike hangars in the city were put on hold when the UK Government scrapped the funding stream. In any case, the Cordles say the kind of bike hangar being installed around Bristol would not be big enough to store their cargo bike.
The couple also have a petition signed by more than 50 people living in their street supporting their calls to be allowed to keep the planters.
A spokesperson for Bristol City Council said: “Claiming part of the public highway as private property by erecting fixtures in the street is against the law. We have a duty to investigate reports of such actions and where appropriate, ask that fixtures are removed and if needed, take enforcement action.
“The council can introduce fixtures to the highway where there is a benefit to the wider community to placing objects such as planters on a street as part of a planned programme of highways improvements. To do this we would go through a planning and engagement process to assess the impacts and community view. This was the case when Cotham Hill was pedestrianised and is also the process we’re going through for the upcoming Liveable Neighbourhoods trial in east Bristol," he added.
