“Hundreds of homeowners deterred from having dropped kerbs fitted outside their homes because of the sky-high council cost have been thrown a lifeline” – what’s happenning is the council’s monopoly on doing the work is going to be ended, and people will be able to choose from a list of 11 preferred contractors to do the work, which should theoretically push prices down.

That the cost of having your kerb dropped so you can park your car in your drive rather than on the street is being lowered is a good start, but actually, why should you have to personally pay anything at all?

The council built the road – and consequently the pavement – initially, so why didn’t they build it with dropped kerbs outside houses? It’s a bit of a racket when you think about it, charging you to do something extra which should have been done in the first place! Considerations about car pollution aside, I’d say in the Modern Era it’s a perfectly reasonable expectation for people to have that if they have cars, and space on their front to keep one, that the pavement is constructed so as to enable them to park their car on their drive.

There’s also the fact that a dropped kerb is more than something solely of benefit to the householder, it also acts to the common good – for every car parked on a drive is a car not parked on the street (or worse still, not parked half on the pavement), meaning there is more space on the street for the traffic, which includes cyclists, to flow freely. And since the dropped kerb is owned by the council rather than by the homeowner, it seems doubly unfair for the homeowner to have to pay for it – after all, it’s hardly going to add value to the house, is it?