Please or to access all these features

Add post

Watch this thread

Save thread

Start a new thread

Flip thread

Hide thread

My feed

Active Unanswered threads

Getting started FAQ's

Unanswered threads Acronyms Talk guidelines

Hide shortcut buttons

Talk

AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Flip

1 2 3 4 5 6

Original poster

To park in front of people's houses?

150 replies

MsMarvel · 18/05/2017 07:53

This always seems to crop up from he point of view of the homeowners (and generally are told are unreasonable...) But never seen it from the point of view of the driver.

I travel for work, and am often in small towns / villages. The sort that have quite an expensive car park, and lots of residential streets.

To save money I generally park on the residential streets and walk back into the centre. Today I'm on a street that is very much dropped kerbs for drives, and small sections of raised pavement in front of each house.

BUT

There are no lines or markings, I am perfectly entitled to park here.

AIBU to do it anyway knowing that I am probably pissing people off? I will be gone by around 3.

OP posts:

strikhedonia · 18/05/2017 18:33

to be fair, I can sympathise with commuters saving £1000 a year in parking (on top of the train tickets) by choosing a free and legal space, if they are not blocking anyone.

aquashiv · 18/05/2017 18:39

Can you not claim back car parking from your employer? Funniest thing I've read today. No doesn't matter if it is a charity you are on able to claim back your parking.

Andrewofgg · 18/05/2017 18:41

In any event, most station car parks are not an option - they are always full and there is a long wait for season tickets.

heron98 · 18/05/2017 18:43

YANBU at all. It's perfectly legal. I really don't get why people are so territorial about the space outside their house. It's very rare I get to park outside my house. I have just lugged all my shopping in from the end of the street. Such is life.

JacquesHammer · 18/05/2017 19:03

There is one particular commuter who parks near a friend slightly further down my road who is terribly obnoxious. My friend really nicely asked if she could possibly park further up as she was blocking the view coming round a corner to get out of my friend's drive (not to mention parking too close to the corner.....). Said commuter started bitching about it on the local FB page.

Can't pretend I'm not enjoying seeing the posts from her when the permits come into force

PedantHere · 18/05/2017 20:26

If you are not blocking access, not in front of a dropped kerb etc then I don't see the problem.

Original poster

MsMarvel · 18/05/2017 20:38

Didnt mean to post and run, I was at work and then my mn on mobile has been playing up and havent been able to post...

Noticed when I was walking back to my car that about half the houses with drives didnt actually have a dropped kerb...

I wasnt blocking any drive, and there was plenty of distance between me and any drive, wjether it was dropped kerb or not.

I didnt get any angry notes, but was getting dirty looks from the man across the road who was outside sweeping the road outside his house (yes. Actually sweeping the road. Outside his house. Ie the public road. ) when I was leaving.

OP posts:

ChardonnaysPrettySister · 18/05/2017 20:43

Why shouldn't he sweep the road?

If he wants to do it why are you so incredulous about it?

I have swept the pavement outside my house on more than one occasion.

Nothing wrong with that.

PersianCatLady · 18/05/2017 20:56

but we are not talking about private land, we are talking about common land/ council land
Actually in the post I was referring to, it was about private land.

"if you have a private property sign, it's not on. Maybe people ignore it because they don't believe you (not an excuse!). I know a few people who will move stones and blocks of wood to park there - seen so many posts about it on my local facebook group, the same way that people chose to seat on the seat blocked by a bag in a train, to make a point"

Thanks

limitedperiodonly · 18/05/2017 21:16

Where I live we don't have any parking restrictions, however it is residents parking only on my street as we are in Central London and finding a place to park your car can be very hard. Despite the very clear signs, every day someone parks without a permit on the street

I live in Central London too Paris but my borough must be different to yours because parking is no problem. There are most definitely parking restrictions all over and residents' bays. I don't have a car any more but if I did, I'd find it easy to park, sometimes outside my house, usually in my street or just around the corner.

A couple of weeks ago I saw a clamped car without a resident's permit and I haven't seen that for years. I think it was probably a hire car driven by a foreign tourist who didn't understand the signs.

Like I said, public transport is so good I haven't owned a car for 12 years. I don't understand why so many people do have cars round here but if they want to pay, that's up to them.

I wouldn't get very far with the council or my neighbours if I started berating them for parking outside my house or decided to put stones in the road so I had an uninterrupted view of the house opposite.

Bonkers.

limitedperiodonly · 18/05/2017 21:25

I'd find it eccentric to see a neighbour sweeping the road but it's a free country. The council sends people to do that several times a day round here. We pay for it in our council tax.

ChardonnaysPrettySister · 18/05/2017 21:35

Several times a day?

We pay a lot of council tax, the street cleaner is a very elusive creature though. Sometimes you have to take the broom in your own hands.

NoMudNoLotus2 · 18/05/2017 21:53

My mum used to live near a football stadium. She doesn't drive and didn't have a driveway so it didn't matter to her. But for visitors it was awful and I used to avoid going to see her on match days as you couldn't get parked anywhere because every road within a mile was chocker block with cars parked everywhere. They'd park on corners, right up to people's drives, on yellow lines. Even blue badge holders parked dangerously right up to the very edge of the road (where yellow lines would prevent non blue badge holders parking that close to the junction) meaning you couldn't see to turn round the corner. It was a nightmare and i'm glad she moved!

strikhedonia · 18/05/2017 22:17

then if you have read my post PersianCatLady you can now understand that removing stones etc. from non-private land is making the same kind of point than sitting on seat with a bag.

Stones and signs are being used by people who have no right to, so others don't realise some of the signs are genuine and the grass verge are genuinely private.

limitedperiodonly · 19/05/2017 00:02

Yes Chardonnay. The street cleaning and refuse collection in my borough is extremely zealous and they do come round several times a day - pavement sweepers, dustcarts, those little trucks that spray water and scrub the gutters with rotating brushes...

There are the huge dumpsters on many street corners for general waste and recycling plus a weekly house-to-house collection for recycling and general waste. Heavily subsidised by parking charges from visitors to the borough, I imagine.

Council tax is one of the lowest in the country. It's a veritable paradise. You should come here. But we don't like people who get territorial about parking spaces.

llangennith · 19/05/2017 00:18

I have an in and out drive and it's often a pain to get in because people park between the two openings, and opposite. But it's not illegal so there's nothing I can do about it.

ChardonnaysPrettySister · 19/05/2017 07:42

That's so sweet of you Limited. It's so perceptive of you, to know exactly what everybody in your neighbourhood thinks and likes.

I'm not entirely sure why I would need an invitation to move anywhere I wanted, but I would think the irony of not wanting someone because you think they are territorial and won't fit in nicely in your little paradise is not entirely lost on you.

LittleMouseontheDairy · 19/05/2017 10:12

strikehedonia - I am not having a go at you because technically I can see your point. But what about the many other commuters who do suck it up and pay those charges to basically be a normal considerate person avoid parking on residential streets nearby and causing other people hassle? Do we get a medal for that? No. But other people merrily go off and save ££ because 'they can' and cause lots of hassle for other people. Is that fair?

LittleMouseontheDairy · 19/05/2017 10:14

Sorry that post wasn't very well written. I'm about to go to a meeting and in a hurry!

Onsiequeen · 19/05/2017 10:20

I can never understand why anyone has an issue with this? Surely because they don't legally own this part of the pavement and you can legally park there it's just ridiculous to expect someone to pay for parking. I have on road parking outside my house and although I admit it annoys me when someone parks in 'my' space I just find one further down the road and move the car once they leave. I would never dream of putting notes on cars!

strikhedonia · 19/05/2017 14:24

Littlemouse well, in truth it costs me a lot more than an extra £1000 to live in a nice area but walking distance from the train station, and it's not really my interest for commuters to park nearby. It's not really fair, but I can understand the point. I do think that if there are no parking restriction it's not bothering anyone if I park somewhere. (again, blocking or restricting drives etc is unacceptable)

Things will become more and more difficult, even my local car parks are full earlier and earlier in the morning, so people will get stuck. Carsharing to the stations would be helpful?

Ledkr · 19/05/2017 15:49

The old lady round the corner is like this.
She goes on and on about our trees blocking her light, stopping things growing etc. She puts notes through the door telling me to get them cut. They are cut twice a year and when the tree surgeons are here she hurries round to boss them about.
She harasses us on the bus too.
She also asked me not to park my car in the street in case she has visitors. She has a big drive and no car.
She told us to cut out front hedge as it obscures the bus stop (it doesn't)
Dh is really patient with her, I am not!
She contested my other neighbours extension even tho it's nowhere near her.
Her reason was that she didn't think they needed the extra space!
I hate this bossiness and interfering nature.

AvonBarksdale99 · 19/05/2017 16:19

I live in a shared house, two car drive and three car household so one always has to park on the street. The landlord (who owns a few houses on the street) has asked us not to park in front of a certain house as the lady there harangues him every time someone is parked there! It's a completely free street, no restrictions... so I sometimes end up parking 5-10 mins walk away when there's a space right opposite my house!

OMGtwins · 19/05/2017 16:37

No issue from me, we have commuters do this all the time in most our previous houses and I had no issue with it, in fact I used to loan my private space outside a flat to the business underneath for free when I wasn't there, they just had to move their car when I got home from work.

We now genuinely do own the road we live on (we are responsible for its upkeep etc, not the council) so people can't park there and now I do get a bit annoyed because people willfully ignore the signs. Having said that I had a wonderful line in politely enquiring if they live on our road or have permission from someone who does to park here. ;)

PersianCatLady · 19/05/2017 16:48

AvonBarksdale99 - Don't take any notice of him. He cannot tell you that you cannot park on a public road.

Flip

1 2 3 4 5 6