Neighbours, driveways and stupid police.

[montysma1]

My driveway entrance is double width, leading into my largely monoblocked driveway, which extends to the full width of my house. The entrance and the driveway are accessed over the pavement which has a lowered kerb.

I am plagued by cars doing 3 point turns, either mounting the pavement (best case ) or more commonly, crossing the pavement and driving squarely right into my monoblocked garden as part of their turn. Its annoying when randopm cars do it.

More annoyingly, a woman who comes daily to a house 3 down from ours (I think she might be the granny and might be child caring), uses our driveways habitually for all her turns, and I mean, all 4 wheels in my garden, (head lights beaming into our living room if its dark). Tonight i actually had to sit in the road way waiting for her to reverse out ouf my drive before I could get in to park on it! She actaully drices right past the driveway of the house she is going into (as it is narrow), manouvers in my garden and drives back down the street to park at the house she is going into!

Phoned the police tonight who say this is neither a criminal or civil offence. They are sending a community officer tomorrow to assuage my ranting, although, I did point out thats its not me who is doing it, so why not visit her?

AIBU to phone thenm back and point out that they are talking crap and that the law seems to state "that it is an offence to drive a vehicle over a pavement unless to gain access to private property" As she is not gaining access to my property, nor has she permission to , then surely it is an offence to mount the pavemnt at my house let alone drive right over it onto my property.

My children play in the garden, and know nopt to even so much as oput a toe out onto the pavement. but they cant even be safe in their own garden as according to the police, its perfectly fine for random cars to swing in at speed, reverse and leave again. they said i should phone back if a car hits one of them!

Sometimes you can't speak to neighbours. I tried after one house insisted on using my numbered parking space for their own use leaving me nowhere to park. And yes I was too wary to speak to them so a lovely calm relative went round. Escalated so badly we ended up with the police here anyway. I won't speak to them again, and the police have advised me not to as well as warning them to make no contact with me

Ragingdull, I hold by my statement that their intitial response was poor. Had they listened to what I was telling them in the first place, rather than saying it wasnt something they would deal with, I would not have had to rant. Had I not ranted however, they would not have sent someone out to shut me up. Had they not sent someone round, they would not have have seen the set up. When they did see the set up, they changed their mind mind sharpish and agreed that it was unacceptable and it was dangerous. Had they listened to what I was telling them, without butting in to fob me off I might not have used the word stupid. Perhaps I should have used "tardy" or "lax". But if you want to dwell on my choice of word rather than the issue, knock yourself out.

Had gone directly to her, there was every chance they would have been nasty and kept doing it anyway. In going to the police first, they know that their cards are marked and she will now have to stop. If she doesnt, or they get agressive, I now have some kind of back up and a logged history of the problem.

Rest asssured that the rioting and looting caused by my time wasting phone call and the community officer being dragged away from the front line for half an hour is not as bad as first feared and the fires should be out within a week, 2 weeks at most.

Well I certainly find it good to know that some people think nearly knocking a child down on their own drive is a non issue. I'll remember that in future when I'm driving around. It's all cool as long as I don't kill them eh?

Which is precisely the attitude the PCSOs in our area when our neighbours son threatened to kill our child. If it weren't for the fact he'd tried that with a different neighbour too and we combined our crime numbers and shouted nothing would have been done. I'm not claiming, nor did I ever, that its urgent, but it should be dealt with. Turns out neighbours son had priors for assault too. Thankfully he's kept away since the arrest, but we shouldn't have had to fight for it.

My attitude? I had no attitude whatsoever I was really very polite until their box ticking responses made it perfectly clear that they werent actually listening to the problem, because when they were reiterating what I was telling them, it was nothing like I had said. Actually, you demonstrate the same inability to assimilate information. I dont have a "parking issue", I have a "child nearly under a car in their own garden" issue.

At that point yes I was assertive, hell yeah, I had a good rant along the lines of what some have said here, ie, arent the police SUPPOSED to concern themselves when a driver endagers a child by their driving?

However at no point was my attitude as aggressive or my language as abusive as yours. You are a credit to the service. or perhaps an example of it.

I dont recall either saying that I had requested or expected an emergency response. Another problem with details there?

I apologise for my cowardice in preferring not to tackle the well known local nutters myself. And positively grovel about my "overwhelming sense of entitlement" in my misguided belief that a child should not be in danger of being run over in a garden.

I promise not to bother the police again until such times as I can produce a corpse.

Okay, so the PCSO goes round to the local nutters house and says 'would you mind not using your neighbours drive because it's really annoying them and they're worried about the safety of their children.'

The nutters think 'stupid police' and ignore the polite word.

What happens next?

RagingDull - you're being obnoxi.... ah I've lost interest

Well done Op - sounds like a good result.

Wow - so glad to hear police have such a great attitude to people with difficult situations, and are sooooo good at being carefully prepared with details before leaping to conclusions!

I'm so reassured now.

Wow RagingBull - perhaps a name change is in order. Raging&^%$
Totally unnecessary that - little tiny bit of an axe to grind maybe?? I really, really hope I'm not in your police distict if you are an example of the attitude of your department's service.

If you read the OPs comments you would realise why this is an issue., but it appears you don't want to, you'd rather get personal. Nice.

Montysma good result. let us know how it goes once they've spoken to her please?

I don't get what your reading OP.....almost everyone agrees its annoying behaviour.

It's just people think (hope) the police have better things to do than police your driveway. Besides they said they would send someone.

I think the chain, the rocks and the flower pots or whatever else you can put at the end of your drive suggestions are very sensible do-it-yourself solutions. Worth a try anyway.

Neither a police nor civil matter? It's tresspass, and potentially wearing out and damaging your property. Fence/gate it over, for the safety of children playing there, but can't they play out the back, which is the safest place? Or park you own car outside across your entry.

Assuming my response was deleted as I quoted from RagingDulls ridiculous reply.

Good luck OP, hope the women is responsive to the PCSO. I'd still get a chain across the drive though just in case.

I love this now mumsnet have removed that post - it looks like a load of people including me just had a random rant!

Like the idea of sticking very random, rantiness in amidst different threads

DH would go apeshit if this happened here, op. as it is, we do have a kind of forecourt at the front which could hold 3 cars comfortably. People do drive in, use it to turn etc, and for the first few years we were here he was constantly running out turning people away. One of our neighbours actually told his nephew that if he wanted to shop in our town he should park here!

These days, DH is a bit more relaxed as the real piss-takers have stopped. You are trying to deal with a piss-taker.

The next time you return home in your car and find her in your garden, block her in. Then have stern words with her. If she's on her own then she may be more amenable. But honestly, I'd get large plant pots, heavy rocks and things and use them to narrow the drive so it's less attractive to her. Or a chain.

*JUX, someone we vaguely knew blocked someone else in once.

The house owner worked full time and was out of the house every morning so wasn't there at school run time. Parking was always difficult for school parents, so one bright spark started parking on this deserted drive every morning.

Unfortunately for her, someone tipped off the owner, who came back home one day while the school parent was at school dropping of DC and parked across their own drive, completely blocking the car in. They then went off somewhere leaving their car in place. Can't remember whether they watched from afar (I would have done) or just left it.

Think they came back or were at home for school finishing time and had stern words.

Excellent idea GreenShadow

I know I am repeating myself and some people havent seen earlier updates, and also , its very hard to describe the set up to people who havent seen it

It does look a bit like a forecourt, because its all paved over. However its not quite as open plan as it maybe sounds. All the houses origionally had a driveway, 2 cars wide, bounded by gateposts, that ran up the garden, along the side of the house, to the back garden. The rest of of it would all be lawn ,shrub, trees, etc, as they are old mature gardens.

Other than the gateway, the gardens are all bounded by a roughly chest hight wall.

The previous owner of my house for some reason, shortened our wall a bit, making the gateway about 3 cars wide, took up every bit of vegetation and cobbled everything. I hate it, but I am stuck with it.

Although I have been surprised by the number of people who think that motorists have every right to turn on a private drivway when the road is perfectly wide, I do keep saying its not the drive way she is on ITS MY GARDEN. By this I mean she is driving across the bit bounded by the garden wall (and which i consider to be a garden even although its cobbled), and not just the bit which opens onto the road via the gateway and which I would nominally call "the driveway".

So in effect, she is crossing the pavement, driving onto my drive, and then throwing a lovely big right turn, driving right across the "garden" within the boundary wall, to the far side, which gives her a nice reverse sweep back along the garden, so that she arrives back on the road turned round and nicely parallel with the kerb. If she cant do that beacuse of how I am parked, she drives in, again over the "garden" bit, to stop with her wheel an inch or two from the door step and her headlights beaming in the glass front door into my living room, if it happen to be dark. The dog goes mental at this, wakes up baby etc, yada yada.

She then drives back down the street, to the property 12 houses away that she visits dailly. This house has its own driveway which she drives past in order to manouver on mine.

I realise its my wider gateway and and "forcourty"layout thats making it so atractive to her, but its still bloody outrageous.

The children until lately have always been shut in the back garden (which is a garden incidentally, with grass and flowers!). Its become an issue lately because they got scooters for their birthday in July. At last my ugly excessive "paved area" seemed to have a use. Safe, traffic free, pedestrian free scootering in your own garden. Alas not.

Aside from the cheek, the inconvenience, the possibility of damage to our property, and the impact it may have on our car insurance, its just the fact that its so bloody dangerous. The children are trained about cars, pavements etc, and are really very aware about road safety. But they are just not looking out for cars in the garden, why would they? We have had a child near miss (stepped from behind the wall but managed to leap back) and a dog near miss. Also a mysterious transfer of paint onto my bumper from another car, the same colour as hers, but of course I didnt see anything so I have no proof.

I still contend inspite of many opinions here to the contrary and the disappeared ranting post of the swearing police officer, that given the circumstances, (all written down in earlier posts), that her driving is dangerous and that I was justified in involving the police.

I have dragged 4 wooden planters to the front to narrow the gateway, maybe that will help. They are very embarassing, as they each contain a completly dead minature conifer. It looks ridiculous! I am going to have to plant things in them.

Other than that, she hasnt been back this week as the relatives she visits seem to be away as their cars havent moved and the Akitas arent hurling themselves against the gate when you pass. I will update when the police get back to me when they have gotten a hold of her or if she appears at the door to duff me up.!

I will be very interested to hear how this turns out OP, it's tough when you have neighbours that are impossible to reason with, or even have an adult conversation with. I sympathise and hope it turns out ok!

I really feel for you, OP. I think you could have given us more information initially, though. She sounds remarkably perverse to me - she must realise she's pissing you off, after all. Are you never tempted to leap out of the front door when she's shining her headlamps into your window and 'remonstrate'? Bloody hell, I would.

I think if you want your DC to be able to play out there safely, I'd invest in a fence and gate anyway - if it were my DC, I wouldn't want them playing in an area open to the road even without the possibility of an entitled nutjob driving onto your property on a daily basis.

Yeah sorry, was in a bit of a blind fury when I wrote it, so not very coherent. I thought that it was all terribly clear when I wrote it down. It made perfect sense, or would have if you had all seen my garden before!

Unfortunately you are the one who is having to take action to stop this silly woman from making her ridiculous manoeuvres.

The planters are a good idea, you could get something not dead to fill them and have your dc join in planting them again. Could you even get a few old scooters or bikes and leave them in the garden? Stupid woman would run over them, damage her car (hopefully) but then what does she expect driving in to someone's garden like this?

No kidding montysma1 it would send me insane! I know what you mean about nutty neighbours though. I crossed similar types in my old house and it made our lives miserable. There are people out there who take pleasure in being utterly unpleasant!

there's an idea.

While you are thinking about rebuilding you wall, you could have some stacks of brick positioned where they will be handy for the bricklayer if when he starts work.