Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, with reference to the oral contribution by the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport of 3 September 2025, Official Report, column 166WH, what the (a) cost, (b) terms of reference, (c) delivery schedule and (d) contractor was for the research she has commissioned on pavement parking.

My officials are in discussion with suppliers to determine the terms of reference for the current work in accordance with Government procurement requirements. They expect to issue the formal specification shortly. Given there are no existing measures of pavement parking, I anticipate this will include preparatory work to create the data-collection methods to be used, followed by a second phase which will be the data-collection fieldwork itself. Costs, and timelines will be finalised during the procurement process. Findings will be published as early as possible and no later than 12 weeks after the final outputs from the data collection stage are agreed in accordance with the Government Social Research Publication Protocol.

This research seeks to measure the extent of pavement parking and its impacts and provide a baseline so that whichever policy we implement can be evaluated. It will not delay any policy announcement nor the publication of my Department’s formal response to the previous Government’s 2020 consultation.