PLANNING COMMENT FOR APPLICATION REF:  5/2025/2244

J Foster

11 Fernleys
St Albans
Herts
AL4 9UT

Object to Proposal

26 Barnfield Road was originally a 3 bed property with a garage, it has now become a 4 bed property and has an additional self contained separately accessed accommodation in place of the garage. The plans show just two parking spaces available on the driveway. Barnfield Road is a very narrow Road and in recent years has become a traffic 'rat run' since the construction of the new housing on the Oaklands site. I note that Herts Highways in their response to this application refer to Barnfield Road as a 'traffic sensitive road'. This will only become worse if the planned development on the adjacent Oaklands field goes ahead. This combined with the fact that many of the properties in Barnfield Road have also been extended with increased number of bedrooms has created parking issues with Barnfield residents using the surrounding roads, Fernleys, Broomleys & Wheatleys for parking. Each of these 3 roads is a close and are even narrower than Barnfield Rd which can cause access issues for the residents and delivery/refuse or emergency vehicles. 
Therefore, I can see that the addition of this self contained accommodation will further increase the parking pressure in Fernleys due to the lack of adequate parking at 26 Barnfield Rd, combined with the fact that access to the accommodation is from Fernleys, not Barnfield Road. It appears that the existing occupier of the self contained accommodation does currently park on the verge in Fernleys.
It should also be noted that when the previous planning permission was granted to turn the former garage from residential to mixed use (application 5/2015/0666), the impact of parking on the local residents was acknowledged by requiring one car parking space to be made available on the drive way of 26 Barnfield Rd for every customer appointment.