Residents who took action after selfish motorists kept blocking off their houses with parked cars have been held up as an example of the benefits of the area co-ordination approach.

The solution to their problems involved nine different organisations getting their heads together after a series of complaints were made.

Residents living in Gordon Street, Brunswick Road, Bedford Street and Regent Street in Earlsdon formed the Butts Residents’ Association in 1998 when the problems got out of hand.

They were furious that staff and students from Coventry Technical College were parking in their narrow streets instead of using the recently-built college car park.

The final straw came when a young mother could not get a pushchair out of her front door because it had been blocked by a car.

Other problems in the area included wheelie bins being left in gutters, litter lying in the back alleys and staff at nearby firms parking in the streets because they did not trust the Queens Road car park’s security.

At the time the area was not included in the area co-ordination network, but special meetings were set up to include all the groups, residents and councillors involved and the difficulties were ironed out.

Coventry’s Area Co-ordinator, David Galliers, who stepped in to help resolve the issues, said that the area was now on the priority list.

He said:

"We will not be able to solve all the problems in the city immediately. We will look at the high-priority areas first and then the priority areas.

"Meanwhile, if there are problems anywhere else people can come to us as they did in this situation and we will try to help."