Describing a parking place

As anyone familiar with the drafting of traffic orders will know there are as many ways to define a parking place as there are people who believe there is only one way to describe that parking place.

Phrases such as ‘a point opposite’, ‘a point in line with’, ‘projected points’, ‘points perpendicular to other points’ and ‘points a certain distance away from another point’, are all used – with varying degrees of success – to describe (at best) rectangular and (at worst) bent, tapering, echelon parking places on roads up and down the country.

Similar variations can be found with the use or non-use of ‘a point opposite’. I was taught that a boundary, common or otherwise, would never require this add-on, whereas a wall or extremity in every instance would. I have since had to learn to relax this rule as each client has its own drafting heritage that is seldom open to question.

Many councils adopt the use of ‘a point opposite’ only when the reference point is on a different side of the carriageway to the area being described. Others do it the way I was taught and some seem to chop and change from one order to the next. I have come to enjoy these variations and embrace them as another quirk in a rather quirky occupation.

Until a few moments ago I had thought that my favourite description for a parking place (if I can say such a thing without inviting too much ridicule) with its continual repetition of the word ‘east’, included the text, ‘from a point X metres east of the eastern kerb-line of East Street, eastwards…’.

However, a quick search on the internet suggests that the only East Street in London appears to be in Southwark and runs from south-west to north-east, so the description presumably read, ‘from a point X metres south-east of the south-eastern kerb-line of East Street, south-eastwards...’. Not quite as succinct but not bad either.

I recently had to describe a cycle parking place on a footway in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, proposed as part of the cycle hire scheme. This must to be the longest description I ever felt the need to use and it went as follows:

‘West Cromwell Road, the north-west side, all that part of the footway which is bounded on the south-west, south and south-east side by an imaginary curved line drawn at a distance of 0.5 metres in a generally northerly direction from and taken perpendicular to the south-west, south and south-eastern extremity of the footway and as extends from a point 4.2 metres south-east of the common boundary of Nos. 2 and 3 Cromwell Crescent to a point 1.3 metres south-west of the common boundary of No. 1 Cromwell Crescent and No. 56 West Cromwell Road and having a width throughout of 2 metres.’

I have no idea what the shortest description is that I've written, but it was unlikely to have been on that footway!