> We can turn this around and ask "what is the source for tagging these ways as access=private

I gave my sources, as I do with all my edits.

The context for my comments here are that Pete Owens has been making tens of edits in the area which seem to quality as mass edits — changing lots of things without actually surveying them individually. Several of them have been demonstrably incorrect. He does not provide sources for any of his edits.

So this isn’t an isolated incident of me being picky about the precise details of an edit. It’s an attempt to deal with a pattern of behaviour which I’m pretty close to reporting to the DWG.

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With that aside, I see your point about access=destination. However, that is the recommended tagging for public roads which are signposted with a “no motor vehicles except for access” sign, which I don’t believe these driveways are. To tag private driveways that way would be confusing.

It’s also unnecessary: aiui the implied right of access would apply even to access=private ways.

And it’s contrary to what the wiki recommends for tagging driveways: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:service%3Ddriveway

imo the question comes down to whether these roads should be tagged as access=private or have no access tag at all. And I believe that depends on who owns the land and whether the road is adopted by the council. The OSMUK Cadastral Parcels say the land is part of the same cadastral parcel as the houses, rather than the main road. I don’t know of any publicly licensed sources which could say whether the road is adopted by the council.