To feel sad when you see another 'gated' house

[ChiantiShire]

There seem to be more and more where I live in the South of England. I also spend a lot of time in the Italian lakes region where every villa is gated. I don't blame people for having a large security gate fitted but it feels like something is being sucked out of the community that will never come back.

not really bothered about individual houses having gates, though i've driven past some in luton that just look dead odd. the gates are bigger than the house, but i don't really like whole gated estates, especially in very afflulent areas/

makes me think the residents are a bit twattish, footballers wives type thing

My friends had a house in a gated community in Orlando. Everyone knew the code from the police to the pizza delivery boy.

I still remember it it was

6060

To clarify, I mean large securitised gates often with lights and sometimes cameras, not ordinary or classical gates. I drive past a lovely village cricket pitch on my commute followed by a long road of what seems to be ever more securitised houses. It isn't a pleasant feeling.

Agent

We are in Scotland but no drugs

Op being robbed while in your own home isn't a very pleasant feeling either.

It screams division and separation and unsocial. And a good setting for a dystopian novle.

Christina, I believe you

agent

It's lanarkshire, it's to keep the drug dealers out

Meh, it depends on the reason. I have a walled garden and I love it. We're getting new build next door and insisted the very high wall was maintained and no windows overlooking. It's not a security thing, it's a privacy thing.

Depends what you mean by gates of course. My parents have gates on their bungalow. It doesn't obstruct view especially, but finishes off their garden and with a rather wide opening, encourages sensible parking by instituting a walking and driving gate. (Previously people would assume it's X wide, therefore I can park right in the middle of their opening).

It means you live in a posh area, people have big houses with nice stuff in them to protect.

We have one being built here but can I ask a question? All these things like gates, grass etc attract a service charge - so are the houses sold leasehold to keep this service charge? Genuinely interested. Please answer if you know. Thanks.

I mean we have a gated community of houses and flats being built here- sold as high end.

My parents house is freehold, you just pay a large annual service / maintenance charge. The service charge covers security and grounds maintenance

When I see gates I think it must be a pain when you pull on to the drive. Who wants to wait for gates to open , or worse get out if your car to do it manually.

My grandparents had gates on their council house in Essex, as did everyone in the rd....I think may have been an original feature...they were low, but wide.

No one has gates here...there seems to be a fashion for building walls and massive gate posts, but then not putting in any gates.

I guess I wondered how they held u to such a charge without a lease. Boring contract ways probably! Hate service charges- too tight for paying for a gate! Thanks for answering

We have gates to keep out the Jehovah's witnesses and umpteen other charity workers/window salesman/EAs/our dogs in and other dogs off our front garden, but under no illusion about keeping out burglars. I'm not keen on whole gated communities though.

The big gates were a massive selling point when we bought our house to keep the hound in. It has also doubled as a good deterrent to door to door people.

Downsides are they take ages to open to put your car through and that it gives Hermes delivery drivers something to just hoss your fragile/non rain proofed parcels over and call it delivered. These then get smacked by the gates when you open them.

We have a driveway to the side of our house with a balcony over it, so it also secures our back garden so we can leave washing out etc.

On charges if it's houses and it is in England usually the house is freehold. Our road is upkept by the residents and we pay £500 a year which is a lot less than many blocks of flats in London pay per year because volunteer residents do a lot of the work. That covers road resurfacing, ditch clearing, insurance, signs, tree work, accountancy, rubbish collection, weekly verge grass mowing etc.

The gates aren't a pain to us. We open them when we go out and often just leave them open until we get back if it's just an hour or so.
Plus I live in the centre of town. I really don't drive much.

The bit that is funny is that with a large gated drive in the centre of town I get incredibly popular at Christmas - people really want to come and see me and, oh, could they just leave their car there for a few hours while they nip in to do some Christmas shopping

I ought to pick a charity and charge during December.

I'd love gates on the front of our house, our dog is such a dickend and is often found prancing down the neighbours lawn as the DC's leave the front door open.

Not sure about gated communities; where we are is reasonably safe. Our NDN's were burgled solely for their car keys not so long ago. DH got a bit security obsessed and would hide our keys every night. But I pointed out to him that if there was a fire, we'd take longer to escape because we'd have to search for the keys (new hiding place every night, mental) and if burglars did come in looking for keys, the sooner they got them, the sooner they'd be out of our home and away from our children. If we're going to be burgled I want them in and out swiftly. So he gave up hiding the keys and accepted that security measures can't guarantee your personal safety.

Our estate is all very open-plan, and while it might not always be a good thing, it would make it much harder for burglars as there's not much hiding room.

Our house has a garden, hedge and normal garden gate tat the front and a backyard with tall heavy wooden gates at the back.

Our locksmith says that even a small barrier has a deterrent psychological effect on a burglar.

He said just shutting the garden gate even without a lock on makes a house look more secure to a burglar. An open garden gate is an invitation.

I used to live in London and we had electronic door entry to our building and then a steel door with multipoint locks on the internal door to our flat.

I then moved to a gated community before moving to our current house.

Really I feel just as safe now without the 'gated security' but I do have window locks everywhere, several locks and bolts on each door and steel grills on basement windows. We never switch burglar alarm on.

I was shocked when I moved to Australia to see how many houses had near-2 metre walls and gates. Often the gates didn't lock, but just as often the front gardens were not used in the sense that no-one sat out there so didn't want to be overlooked by passersby. Only the older houses are open to the street.

Having said that, we do sit in our front garden which is raised from the road and behind a low fence. The sitting in the front yard is, apparently the "habit of Poms and ethnics". Though to be fair, no Aussies I know do this.

We have high gates which are handy for the dogs and children that are roaming about. Also provides another layer of protection for the other animals as we have a footpath running through our land and people often leave those gates open.

Where do you all live, of more to the point, is it still the 1950s, that you have so many travelling salesmen bothering you? Isn't it a bit OTT just to keep the occasional person out?

I think it depends on the estate and why it's gated I live on a private cul de sac that, technically, is gated.

My little estate used to be a farm yard, a lot of our houses are converted from the old farm buildings. There is a wall all the way round it, but it's always been there and the conservation officer insisted it remain when planning permission was granted.

99.999999999% of the time the gate is not closed, but as the council refused to adopt our road, in order to maintain the private road status we have to close the gate once a year, otherwise it becomes a right of way with us still responsible for the maintenance and repairs

We're not all large, detached houses either. The original farmhouse is large and detached, but the rest of us are 2/3/4 bed semis.

We did have issues with people taking the piss regarding parking - we have a little pedestrian cut through which comes out behind the primary school and lots of parents found it a convenient place to park and take their kids to school, however, instead of being considerate they parked on people's driveways and all over their front gardens, blocked the road and generally behaved like arseholes, so we had an electronic bipper thing installed and started closing the gate which stopped it. The gate is now back to being open all the time

Our gate makes no difference to security even when it's shut, it's a waist-ish high 5 bar gate, not huge imposing gates