Nice new garages…just one small problem, the cars won't fit inside

DOZENS of motorists have been left with a shrinking feeling – after their new garages turned out to be too narrow for their cars.

Officials at Aberdeen City Council decided to demolish and rebuild some 200 garages. But residents are furious because the replacements are seven inches narrower than the old ones, and even for those who manage to get their cars inside, they find they can't get out of the vehicles once there.

Anne Wilson, 68, one of the drivers affected, has been forced to leave her Honda HRV on the street, despite paying almost 10 a week for the garage.

She said: "I was told the council spent 400,000 refurbishing the garages.

"Because they are so short of cash you would have thought they would have made sure they got it right. It's absolutely ridiculous. Once my car is in the garage there is no way I can get out of it. Do they expect me to sleep in it?"

Aberdeen City Council decided to revamp the garages in the Bucksburn area because many of them had asbestos in the bricks.

Residents claim the new garages use much older bricks which have reduced their width from 8ft 2in to 7ft 7in, while the entrance is now just 6ft 4in wide.

Mrs Wilson, a retired carer, said: "I can't understand it all. The garages were already extremely narrow. Making them even smaller is just stupid. Everyone is pretty annoyed. We can't use the garage at all so we're thinking about stopping paying until this is fixed."

Peter Skene, a neighbour of the Mosses, is waiting for work to begin on his garage. The bus driver was alarmed when he tested his 6ft-wide BMW 3 Series in one that has already been built – and found he was stuck fast.

He said: "The council have not taken the size of the bricks into account. The old garages were built when cars were a lot smaller, so why make them smaller?"

The Automobile Association said several members had complained that garages were too small for their cars – with some carpeting their walls so they can squeeze in and out without scratching car doors.

AA president Edmund King said: "No doubt there has been a trend for cars to get wider as more safety devices have been fitted. However, it appears that many garage specifications were designed with 1960s cars in mind.

"Many garages are not fit for purpose so end up as utility rooms and dumping grounds for unwanted household goods."

The Royal Automobile Club Foundation, said a study by Essex County Council last year found almost four out of five garages were not being used to store vehicles.

Spokesman Philip Gomm said: "It changed the planning guidance to encourage developers to build larger garages suitable for what they were intended for – to house cars."

Mr Skene is calling on the council to make changes before his garage is built. Other residents have also complained to the authority. A spokesman for the council said: "We will look into this immediately. We would urge any residents with concerns to contact us in the first instance."

Bigger cars result in some neat ways to avoid narrow scrapes

NICK Gibbs, the news editor of car magazine Auto Express, said the decreasing size of garages and the increasing width of cars was a vexing issue for many motorists.

"The standard size of garage was set in the 1960s – but that doesn't take into account the fact that cars have got wider.

"Lots of more popular cars seem to be quite small – but the manufacturers have increased the width and the height."

"Space is at a premium, and as builders try to cram ever more buildings within every available space the garage space is becoming less of a must– have.

"We get letters from our readers all the time about the issue of neighbours fighting over patches of road outside their blocks of flats."

He said that readers who found parking tricky had devised a number of clever solutions to negotiating large cars into small spaces.

"People have all sorts of personal methods to make sure they stop before the car hits the wall.

"Some people hang something from the ceiling so that when it hits the windscreen you will know when to stop.

"Other people fix a piece of carpet to the garage wall so they don't scrape their cars against the breezeblocks when they park."