Parking in residential streets where houses have no drives or garages is a perennial problem and a headache for home owners.

But the battle for a few feet of kerb space is creating serious fall-out that motorists might not have considered.

The emergency services, particularly fire crews who have to navigate bulky tenders to the scenes of incidents, are reporting a widespread access problem across the district.

This was brought into sharp focus this week when badly-parked cars in Bracken Edge hampered the efforts of fire crews to get to a blazing house.

Firemen even had to manhandle cars out of the way to create a clear route to the house – losing precious minutes that could have meant the difference between life and death for those involved in the fire.

Thankfully, in this instance, the family at the house survived the blaze... although their home was badly damaged and personal effects irretrievably lost.

That is bad enough for the family, but next time the fire brigade is delayed in getting to an incident, it could be lives that are lost.

The answer is simple: don’t park cars in such a way that access is impossible. It might cause more difficulty for motorists and residents, but at least it won’t cost lives.