As a frequent visitor to Oxford, I learn from the Oxford Mail that residents of the city’s side-streets are confronting a problem common to many other towns – that of nose-to-tail parking outside their homes.

Your report made it plain that spelling out the facts of urban life would take the heat out of the debate.

Firstly, residents’ claim to a ‘right’ to park or at the kerbside is a false premise.

All of any adopted road, ie, a carriageway made and maintained by the local authority, is available to any licensed road-user. Lengthy parking and annexing a section of kerbside for an individual’s use is obstruction and therefore illegal, strictly.

It is astonishing to me that local councillors have not yet had the courage, purely for political reasons, to determine the facts of the matter and convey them to residents, to allay any argument or misconception.

Residents have already rejected the concept of a licensing fee for their kerbside parking, even if that were a legally viable solution. What they should bear in mind is that they pay substantially less council tax than homeowners who do have their own garaging or parking space.

It’s not a matter of fairness to folk whose homes were built before common ownership of cars. A great many homeowners with parking space pay higher band council tax, regardless of their means, and low-band residents get away with a lower contribution to all council-provided services.

In Oxford, for good measure, you have to add in the cost of providing the Park-and-Ride scheme, which has become necessary only because visitors who contribute to the local economy do not have access to on-street parking because of the selfishness of residents.

It’s a mess, occasioned by refusal to confront parking as a problem for so long.

Homes advertised for sale with on-street parking realise far higher prices than those without that facility – which is provided by the general taxpayer.

To restrict kerbside parking would see prices plummet, with negative equity featuring large in the equation.

Perhaps a solution would be to advise residents and potential buyers that their ‘tenure’ of kerbside parking is restricted to them and would not be conveyed to any new owners.

Over time, the problem would disappear and the impact on property value too would adjust itself. Meanwhile, any scheme for restricted or privileged use, paid-for or not, would not stand up to legal challenge for the reasons explained earlier. Councillors have a duty to tell people how it is and put speculation and hopes firmly to bed.

Roger Moreton, Sibson, Leicestershire