Peter offers some advice, based on personal experience, on how to find a lock-up garage, something that’s not always easy.
► If, like me, you’re lucky enough to own an older car or three then this might well be the time of year when you start thinking about storage for winter. For me, the need was particularly acute this year because, as I’ve mentioned before, Minxy has just had a small fortune spent on a full restoration, but for various reasons the garage she’s lived in up to now is no longer available. I was also anxious to find some decent covered storage for the Rover P6 – last winter that had to sit outside, albeit under a good-quality car cover. Somewhere for the Rover 827 Coupe would also have been nice, but it’s just too long to go in a standard sized lockup. I discovered this the hard way some years ago after I’d rented a local council lock-up for it, only to discover that the Rover wouldn’t fit.
Of course, council lock-ups are what many classic enthusiasts have relied on down the years to provide low cost and no frills undercover storage, and they can be a good solution. However, anyone looking to rent one of these at present may not find it as easy as it once was as most ‘council housing’ these days is actually controlled by Housing Associations. Their only role is to provide housing, and if their garages aren’t required by their housing tenants, then from their point of view the land they are on is better used as additional housing. Many privately-owned blocks of garages are going the same way; I actually found a block of garages for sale last year and the plan was to buy it, use some myself and let out the rest. Unfortunately however, the site had planning permission for housing. This put the price out of reach and the site has since been redeveloped for housing because, quite simply, it’s more viable commercially to use it to house people than housing cars. It’s also generally speaking a lot easier to get planning consent for housing on a lock-up garages site than on a previously-undeveloped one. But that’s 20 lock-up garages that are no longer available.
Some Housing Associations do however have garages available, as do some local authorities, as some, when transferring their housing stock chose, or had to, retain some or all their garaging. However not all are in places where one would always feel 100% confident about leaving a cherished or valuable car! And here too, with all the ongoing pressure on local government finance, many garage sites are being sold off.
Luckily, I have been able to find somewhere for my pair on a privately-owned site that’s too small for viable redevelopment and is surrounded and overlooked on all sides, plus has the additional security advantage of a zig-zag entrance that would be totally impossible for any kind of recovery vehicle. There is, though, very strong demand indeed around here (not
