I think we shouldn't knock local authorities here because they are in a very difficult position. The problem at heart is the number of cars many of us now own. And the streets simply were not designed to cater for the volume of vehicles that are trying to squeeze into a street that was designed for the horse and cart.

So, it's not simply a case of providing extra land for more car parking, because where will that end? And is this the best use of land in our community—providing it for cars? Surely the real answer is to try and give people alternatives so that they don't need to own multiple cars in their households, and there are other ways to move around.

I think the advent of electric cars and driverless cars, where cars are far less likely to be owned, they're more likely to be leased and shared because the capital costs will be so high—it will be on-demand, responsive transport, and this is only 15 to 20 years away. So, technology does offer us some solution here.

In the short term, councils do have a very difficult problem of trying to arbitrate between these conflicting demands that people have to want to park as closely as possible to where they live. I think we need to give them a set of tools where they can use their judgment of what's right for their communities, but also send the very clear signal that parking willy-nilly where they want when that's blocking people with pushchairs and disabilities from getting around isn't on.