Parking Problems and Neighbours who ‘Own’ the Road

Parking Problems and Neighbours who ‘Own’ the Road

10:03 AM, 23rd August 2011, About 13 years ago 12

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"Car parking creates tension on UK streets."

Buy to let tenants parking in the streets near their home can spark huge rows with neighbours who think they ‘own’ the roads outside their homes.

Many rented homes come with inadequate parking – or a free-for-all to find a space on the road nearby.

Research findings have revealed 44% of home owners believe they have rights over the street outside their properties.

In student neighbourhoods where several tenants may have a car, this can stress relationships with other residents – especially as around one in five feel ‘emotionally stressed’ if someone else parks outside their home.

Many home owners (18%) are angered by motorists parking across access to their drives or garages, while 3% have come home to find a stranger has parked on their drive.

Parking perils can even lead to some home owners setting themselves up as ‘traffic wardens’ who block parking outside their homes with cones, tape and illegal ‘no parking’ signs.

Around 45 of homeowners told researchers for insurance firm Churchill, who carried out the study, that they had rowed with neighbours over parking in the last year.

Tony Chilcott, head of Churchill, said: “Many people believe a residents’ parking permit gives them official ownership of the road in front of their homes; unfortunately for them, usually this is not the case.

“Parking issues can lead to heated arguments, but people need to be tolerant of drivers that are parking entirely legally, even if it is directly outside their property. Drivers need to be considerate when parking, making sure they are not obstructing any access to driveways or parking bays.”

Parking is so bad in some cities that motorists and drivers have taken extreme steps to deal with the problem.

In Oxford, universities ban students from bringing cars in to the city if they live in halls of residence – and if they break the rules they face eviction.

Meanwhile, letting agents and estate agents in Westminster, London, are under investigation for fraudulently obtaining residents parking permits. The agents obtained permits for properties listed on their books to save paying for parking while claiming off-street garage expenses from their employers.


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Comments

20:29 PM, 1st February 2012, About 12 years ago

What a totally unrealtic article.  Good real,  Property owners are hard done by all they do is paying out and watch while these people come for freebies.  So much for working hard and owning your own home and not being able to park outside it.  Law change is needed

1:13 AM, 2nd February 2012, About 12 years ago

Point of law ; ALL those homeowners who think they have the right to park outside their home ........WRONG
Nobody has the RIGHT to park anywhere.
The police may deem any parking as obstruction and remove the offending vehicle.
This includes the idiots who seem to forget with their thoughtless parking that restricts the ability of anything larger than a car to pass down the road.
Err...what about when a fire engine needs to get down the road, or an ambulance or  a rubbish truck
.ANYONE who parks outside a dropped kerb is causing an obstruction
ANYONE who is parking on a drive, not belonging to them will be trespassing.
ANYONE who does this may well find their car towed away by the poilce or magically removed from outside a dropped kerb  or from a driveway and find the vehicle in the middle of the road where again it will be removed by the police and the owner prosecuted for allowing the vehicle to obstruct a main carriageway.
Hopefully now car drivers will NOT do the aforementioned .
Hopefully now all owners who find themselves inconvenienced by cars being parked outside their properties will now realise they have no right to park their vehicles on any particular part of the public highway.
Yes it can be a right pain; but that's life.
I would add that the only time ; and this is completely unofficial and has NO lawful basis, and that is when Funeral Directors put cones out for the cortege the following day.
Also the police put out cones which MUST be obeyed.
The majority of people would accept this even though they may without doing anything wrong remove them.
I would sugest anyone who has the possibilty to do so is to remove their front gardens,install paving and a dropped kerb and then you may park on your own drive.
It might even reduce your insurance premiums!?

13:32 PM, 2nd February 2012, About 12 years ago

My property in Cambridge in on a road with private parking outside each house, there are no markings on the road, and it just looks like part of the road.  However the title deeds makes clear it is private land next to the road, not part of the road, this worked well for years as the lawyer explained it whenever someone brought a home.  Private landlords/agents also explained it to before a tenant signed up.

That is until a housing association brought some houses in the road, their tenants just believed they could park anyway and would not except that any legal document in complex english had an effect on their lives.  The housing association tenants also own a lot more cars than the professionals – as for some reason housing association tenants tend to think cars are a status symbol and anyone that anyone who uses a bike is a “looser”.

The housing association tenants just seem to resent anything a professional resident of the road tells them and thought they could park somewhere just because a police officer has not given them a ticket.

At least my current tenant does not have a car, but it makes viewing hard when the private parking has someone else’s cars parked in it.

Mark Alexander - Founder of Property118

13:42 PM, 2nd February 2012, About 12 years ago

We had a similar problem outside our office which is on a privately owned office park where we jointly own the unadopted roads. We are closer to Norwich airport terminal than the airports own Pay and Display car park so you can guess what used to happen. We called in a company called Flash Park and they sorted the problem for us "in a flash!" It's so simple, they put up legal parking notices at their expense, if somebody parks there any member of any company occupying property on our office park can take a picture and upload it to the internet and Flash Park do the rest. For the record, we are not on commission for mentioning http://www.flashpark.co.uk/ They do pay us a commission on every fine they collect as a result of us uploading pictures of illegal parking though 🙂 All we had to do to get this set up was to get written consent from every business in our office park. They can also issue resident and guest parking passes if required.

17:20 PM, 2nd February 2012, About 12 years ago

Putting “no parking” signs up would be an option, but they would not look nice on the front gardens – Barratt when they built the estate did everything possible to make the driveways look like part of the road, including putting a path between the parking and the front gardens that looks like a pavement, but is legally not.   (All properties in the road have a right to use the path (fake pavement) but it is part of the front gardens)

It just needs the housing associate to do their duty and not allow any tenants to live there unless the tenant is ABLE to understand the legal setup and WILLING to keep to the rules, including not letting any visitor’s park in other people’s spaces.  But the housing associate does not seem to care about what they are doing to the area.

17:23 PM, 2nd February 2012, About 12 years ago

just make sure that you pay hed to the SUDS regulations and instal appropriate permeable, sustainable surfaces!!

2:32 AM, 3rd February 2012, About 12 years ago

Oh yes; but something that might be lost on your standard pikey when they come along saying they have a bit of tarmac leftover and do you want your drive doing!!!?

2:36 AM, 3rd February 2012, About 12 years ago

I know it is hassle but these HA tenants are trespassing.on your space.
Take it to the county court maybe or miraculously every time they park in your space the car magically ends up with a broken window and ends up in the middle of the street causing obtruction.
I think these people will soon get the message.

2:43 AM, 3rd February 2012, About 12 years ago

Isn't this response just a question of a civil offence.
If they choose not to pay a fine there is not a lot you can do unless you wish top pursue via the county court.
We have the same issue on my private flat development.
The Managing Agents put tickets on cars but they just get ignored as far as i aware.

Mark Alexander - Founder of Property118

7:21 AM, 3rd February 2012, About 12 years ago

It worked for us, that's all I can say. If people choose to pay £65 a day to park their car outside our office whilst they take a week in Ibiza that's up to them. The company we use do collect the money.

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