Row over no dropped kerb

[pingu2209]

My friend lives in a very busy and narrow street full of Victorian terraced houses with terrible parking issues. Many of the houses have had their front garden walls removed and paved over their garden so that they can park their car.

Some of these houses have paid the council to drop the kerb outside so they can park, but many of the houses have not. You can legally park across someone's house (and therefore car parking space) where the kerb is not dropped.

There are constant rows between my friend and her neighbours when she parks infront of 2 or 3 houses where the kerb is not dropped. When she does it, it is because she has no choice as there is no where else to park on the street.

The owners of these houses have become really nasty about it and she is worried her car/house will be damaged during the night. Her view is they should apply for a dropped kerb and pay for it to be done. Of course, they may well have already applied and the council have turned them down as there are so many dropped kerbs already? Who knows.

Is she being unreasonable?

IMO having good neighbourly relations is worth far more than not being able to park in the street you live on. If you choose to live somewhere with parking issues then you just have to suck it up and park elsewhere if there are no spaces. I used to live in a street like that and it was a pain, but we just had to deal with it and get on.

Perhaps if your friend hadn't pissed her neighbours off so much she might have been able to come to some arrangement whereby she parked across their drive and when they arrived back she moved her car to let them park on their drive.

Your friend is being a bit of an arse tbh.

This is in the Highway Code

[Laws RTA 1988, sect 22 & CUR reg 103]

243
DO NOT stop or park

near a school entrance
anywhere you would prevent access for Emergency Services
at or near a bus or tram stop or taxi rank
on the approach to a level crossing or tramway crossing
opposite or within 10 metres (32 feet) of a junction, except in an authorised parking space
near the brow of a hill or hump bridge
opposite a traffic island or (if this would cause an obstruction) another parked vehicle
where you would force other traffic to enter a tram lane
where the kerb has been lowered to help wheelchair users and powered mobility vehicles
in front of an entrance to a property
on a bend
where you would obstruct cyclists? use of cycle facilities

*does that mean she is breaking the law, I wonder. I assume if someone has a driveway and no front garden, then theoretically, that is the entrance to the property?

"Why can't peopl park further away & walk. I'm sure some people have forgotten what legs are for."

Agree - but same goes for people who insist on using front gardens as make do parking and driving over pavements. If they don't have a dropped curb they don't have right of access over the pavement to their parking place. Perhaps they should have thought about driveway considerations when moving to the street, not just OP's friends. But by insisting they are reserving roadside parking that's not their's to reserve.

We were in this situation once. We lived in a street with roadside parking for anyone. One flat dweller then knocks down their small garden wall and starts parking. No interest whatsover in applying for a dropped curb but insists noone parks ouside.

They could insist all they like and plead that they couldn't get their car out to take their toddler to hospital should there be an emergency (so be responsible and if you need to drive your kid to hospital park your car so you can get out) but is was the near the tube so Mr smith who drives 10 miles to park there and get the tube isn't going to know their personal circumstances he's going to be ' ooh roadside parking space' because that's what it is.

But this couple wouldn't let it go and were waiting for on unsuspecting woman to return to her car and they let loose - the police were called. The situation was that they police take no interest unless things get very nasty and even then they deal with the nastiness and not the rights and wrongs of no dropped curbs.

Don't let your friend get to the point where it gets really shitty. Life's too short.

I'm glad she's not my neighbour.

We once lived in a rented house with a driveway but the landlady didn't want to pay to drop the kerb. Obviously, we weren't going to pay if we were only there for a year. It was also on a busy road so we'd sometimes park in drive so as not to always take children out of car on the road or to unload shopping etc.

Our close neighbours would never have parked outside our house although their guests would sometimes. Fair game I guess if a car's not actually parked there - but not very neighbourly if you know that your neighbours are using the driveway.

She is being completely U. As soon as we moved to this house we applied to have the kerb dropped in front of our drive and were happy to pay. In the interim my son had a serious accident and because someone had thoughtfully parked over the entrance to our house (even though there was plenty of parking about 30 seconds walk away) we could not get our car out to take him to hospital. We had to call an ambulance instead to get him there.

I can never understand how some people can be so small minded, it baffles me completely.

There would be less parking if they all parked on the road surely.

SIBU.

Neither she nor they are being unreasonable. They both want parking spaces and both have reasonable arguments so the only answer is to find a compromise or help out the more vulnerable person.

Our street has a similar problem with parking but most of our neighbours try to stick to the unwritten rule about leaving someone's parking space directly outside their house to them. Some are just idiots and can't park efficiently anyway and we'd have a serious problem if the 2 neighbours with no car left and were replaced with car owners. Or worse with MORE 2-car or even 4 car families.

We especially appreciate our neighbours kindliness at the moment as I've had nasty spd for part of this pregnancy - but then we deliberately chose to stick at one car for as long as we live on this road so as not to have more parking hassles. PP who mentioned that weird idea of compromise might just have a point!

Your friend is completely within her rights to park where she is parking...all the people who dont pay for dropped crossings have absolutely no right to complain...you might think they are doing the right thing getting their cars off the road but by continually driving across the pavement they are possibly damaging all the services in the pavement which run a lot shallower than they do in the road...when you have a dropped crossing put in not only are the kerbs lowered but these services are protected....I they want to park on a driway way they should put their bloody hands in thier pocets and get thier footway lowered properly!!!

And I do know what im talking about...

Maureen the quotation from the highway code is correct however it must be a legal entrance to a property which, if there is no drop crossing it wouldnt be legal.

hmmm i can't decide.
for a while i was in the "yes, she is being unreasonable" camp

but the more i think about it the more i think that they're ALL being unreasonable.
they DO NOT have access to their driveways, and they DO have an alternative if their bit of kerb has a car parked across it... they could park in another road themselves! after all, if they hadn't decided to pave their driveway but not get a dropped kerb they'd have to do that anyway iyswim?

I think it's silly to not even look in the next street along etc etc just because she is sick of them, but I can understand why she would be cross at them effectively being allowed to park on the street even though they don't have a dropped kerb, when she (abiding by the rules) has to park elsewhere.

I guess my final thought is that you can't really complain when you are part of the problem. It's shit when you live somewhere with lots of cars and poor parking... but you choose to live there presumably and you choose to have a car, so you have to put up with it

We have just paid an arm and leg to get the kerb dropped outside our house. You have to take the council's "quote" and then eventually, after much argy-bargy about planning permission (even if you don't need it), some major motorway maintenance-type firm comes and does it.
Wish we could have got our friendly builder to do it for a couple of hundred...

I think she is BU. If they hadnt had their gardens paved over they would be parking in frount of their house, they have gone to the effort of paving their garden so they have somewhere to park. If your friend wants to garanti a parking space she should do what they have done.

The fact that they havent dropped their kerb is irrelivant to me (it maybe legal to park accross their drive but it doesnt make it right (in my eyes) to do so.)

How long is the wait to get the kerb dropped? Around here it takes 2 yrs so most people go ahead and put in drive while waiting. Also the expense is fairly high and in the current climate people need to save and do jobs piece by piece. Also if your friend is parking in front of a pedestrian gate she is in the wrong.
Seriously is a parking space worth all this stress?

Maybe your friend should rent a room to someone with a blue badge, then apply to the council for a disabled parking space?

Some people recently bought a house in our street, spent a bomb on it, and are now looking to move becasue of arguing with neighbours over parking..

Not worth it.

IMO your friend would do better not to provoke, but if I were her I would definitely be reporting the owners to the council planning enforcement team/highways dept (highways if planning permission not required I.e. It is not a classified road).

I hate it when people just drive over the Kerb/unstrengthened pavement to get to their front garden. Is dangerous and illegal.

Bollards in front would work a treat.

Discobeaver, how would that help the OP? I hope that suggestion is tongue in cheek.

Of course she is being unreasonable - all she is doing is imposing her parking problems on somebody else and either preventing them from parking safely and considerately or preventing them from leaving their property. Just because something isn't illegal doesn't make it right or decent.

Her landlord should be amenable to paving over the garden and dropping her kerb.

Round here, off-street parking adds about 70k to the sale price of a property.

She may or may not be unreasonable, but she is definitely being rather silly. I'd rather walk for five minutes than have my car keyed or my wing mirrors ripped off, which sadly sounds like the direction things are taking.

She will come out one day to find someone has keyed the paintwork,slashed the tyres or clamped her.
Why doesn't she move when her tenancy runs out to somewhere with allocated parking?
She sounds vu to me.

can you clarify if your 'friend' parks in front of their house when their car is in the driveway.

If so then YABVU. They were there first and logic dictates if they weren't on their drive, then they would be taking the space anyway.

Trixy after I posted I thought " there should be a Tongue in cheek emoticon" and nearly posted the same. Sense of humour gets a bit lost here sometimes.

PenguinArmy .... exactly. They are not 'creating more parking' by having dropped kerbs, that is surely not the point - they are getting cars off the street so you don't have to drive down it at 2mph like you do most crowded Victorian sts.

I really don't get the people who say she should block the neighbours in; on- or off-street, these people are taking up the parking space in front of their house. So, er, don't park there.

And for all the people hooting about how it is illegal... the council have apparently blocked dropped kerbs in this area and also, the neighbours are really not inconveniencing anyone else by doing this, so she should just butt out.... Do you call the council if people leave their bins out on the wrong day, too?

While I can understand how irrationally irritating it must be to see people having the benefit of off-street parking without paying for the dropped kerb, I think your friend is being a complete arse to be honest.

The fact that these people have not bothered to pay to have the job done properly does not actually affect her to her detriment at all. If they had paid for dropped kerbs the space would still be unavailable to her. I suspect she is actually just really pissed off that so much parking has been lost because of garden conversions and is taking that annoyance out on the people who have left themselves open to arguments of "well LEGALLY you have no right to stop me parking there".

The fact that she refuses to even look for a space in the next street in favour of blocking someone in when she knows it will escalate the unpleasantness speaks volumes. She is clearly thoroughly invested in this argument and determined to win, no matter what nastiness ensues. Because she is In The Right Legally.

How strange.