PITY the poor driver who tries to park outside their house in Barrow town centre.

Residents must be at their absolute wits end with the whole system under severe pressure.

The old chestnut goes that when you buy a house, you don’t buy the space in front of your property.

But it is important to be considerate to people who live there.

You also have to pity the council for trying to resolve a problem, yet being thwarted at every step by those who seek to cheat the system.

In short, parts of Barrow were never designed for this amount of cars.

Yet the design of modern motors gets bigger and bigger with every new model. The situation is squeezed by the compact Victorian design of the streets, which makes passing places tight. Car owners outnumbers the spaces available.

It is difficult to see what can be done to keep residents happy, maintain a healthy turnover of spaces for shoppers, and keep the streets safe from obstruction.

Do we really need so many yellow lines?

Could major employers and the council consider purchasing a tract of land to make a public car park available to people at a reduced rate?

Yet that’s little consolation to those on tight incomes and low wages. It’s clear this free-for-all requires a major review.