No Vehicles Except For Access

[Grumpybutt]

Can I park in a road that has a "No vehicles except for access" sign.
A car with a motorbike on top of it.
The road is near to a beach i use.
There are no single or double yellow lines in the road.
Could I say I need access to the road to go to the beach?

[Buenchico]

Similar questions have been posted here before (e.g. https://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/Motoring/Road-rules/Question763415.html ) but the definition of 'access' still seems to be a rather grey one.

In general it seems to mean access to properties along the relevant stretch of road, such as by residents, refuse collectors and delivery drivers calling at those properties. I very much doubt if access to a beach would be regarded as permissible where such a sign is displayed.

In particular, I can think of areas around Jaywick in Essex where there are short side roads, leading from the main through road, providing pedestrian access to the beach. However there are 'No vehicles except for access signs' displayed and I think that almost anyone can see that they're there to allow the residents of those short streets to be able to park their cars without losing their spaces to visitors to the area.

Even if there were no houses (or shops, etc) along roads leading to a beach, it seems reasonable to assume that the local authority had a good reason to place 'access only' restrictions on such roads. To me, that would strongly suggest that nobody should be driving on those roads unless, say they were driving a vehicle associated with shore defence work (or similar).

I agree though that there are instances when it can be extremely hard to work out exactly which drivers they're meant to apply to. For example, there used to be an road leading to a big multi-storey car park in Romford that had an 'access only' sign at the start of it. There were no shops, houses or other building along that road at all; it simply went to the car park. In that case, the 'access only' sign clearly applied to access to the car park, rather than to any residential or commercial properties. (It's quite a while since I've driven to Romford but I seem to recall that, on the last time that I did, the sign had been removed. It was clearly confusing drivers who were trying to find somewhere to park but who then encountered a sign apparently suggesting that they had no right to access the car park at all!)

There's a similar confusing situation in Ipswich, where a crescent-shaped road leads through a housing area, with an 'access only' sign at the entry to it. However, half way around the crescent there's an area with no housing but with some short-term parking bays which seem to have been put there to enable people to park for access to the shops on an adjacent road. I have driven around that crescent occasionally, precisely to use one of those parking bays (on the grounds that I've been using the road to access a lawful parking place, rather than any particular property), but I've never been entirely confident about my legal right to do so.

[dannyk13]

In a word no.It means access for the purpose of deliveries etc to property in that street.

[bhg481]

I was looking for a car park in Pangbourne when I went for my jab. I found a free one but the only road to it was Access Only along a street of houses, so I opted to use a paying one instead.

[davebro]

I do use such a street in Llangollen as a means of escaping from the town centre onto the A5. I do wonder if a cop saw me just drive in and out he could say I was not using it for "access".

[barry1010]

No