MID Devon residents are paying some of the highest parking permits in England to keep their cars outside their own homes, it has been revealed.

A survey by Esure car insurance shows that residents in the district are paying an average of £425 per year to the council from the district council.

Mid Devon is the second highest in the country, only behind the London Borough of Islington, where residents pay £545, with third place Purbeck in neighbouring Dorset paying £372 per year.

Mid Devon was also one of the areas where residents had to wait the longest for the permits to be approved.

The report also stated there is a declining amount of parking space for residents because of the increase in the development and construction of flats, which do not provide car parking spaces.

It also shows that since 2011, car ownership has grown at twice the rate of residential parking spaces.

Jon Wilshire, chief underwriting officer at Esure, said: “Drivers are not imagining it – it really is harder to find a parking spot for your car.

“Over the past two decades the number of vehicles on the road in Britain increased by 10 million, going up from 21 million in 1995 to 31 million in 2015[ix] but the space available for parking in residential areas has not kept up. In some areas the average space available is so tight that drivers can barely manoeuvre their cars into the spaces available.

“When space is so limited, drivers must take extra care when parking to avoid damaging their own vehicle or those around them.”

The report adds the squeeze in parking is not only putting up the cost of a residential parking permit, but in some cases may leading to more than a nine-year wait to get a permit.

Information obtained by a Freedom of Information request found that six councils admit residents have had to wait over a year for a parking permit in their area.

The two areas with the longest waiting lists fall under the remit of Canterbury City Council and Mid Devon District Council, where two local residents had to wait 3,466 and 2,867 days (or 9.5 and 7.9 years) for a parking permit respectively.