To think if you don't have a dropped kerb you should accept that you can't always park outside your house

[Sayhellotothethings]

That's it really.

I know a lot of people that have started huge parking wars with their neighbours because they feel they should be able to park outside their home, but don't have a dropped kerb.

To the point where they have stopped being friends with neighbours. One family I know sit at their window all day waiting for space to move their cars, and have blocked people in on purpose.

AIBU to think if you don't have a dropped kerb you should kind of just get over it? Unless you have exceptional circumstances which mean you kind of need to be directly outside, in which case chat to the neighbours but still do not act like you are entitled to the space.

Yes @victoriashleigh same here! My road is one of the first roads that you come to near the station that doesn't have residents' permits so it's always full. I don't have a massive issue having to park a few mins from my house, however had this been the case when the DCs were still babies and I was wresting with car seats / shopping etc I would have felt much more frustrated.

My current annoyance is that there are 2 people who leave bins out when they take their cars out to reserve the space outside of their houses. What gives them the right? None of the rest of us do it and many of us have lived here for over ten years! That said I do actually move the bins back onto the pavement and park my car there if I can't find a space elsewhere.

@Peckalina did you read the whole of my post? Of course I’m doing other people a favour by having a dropped kerb and drive! By ‘losing’ one parking space I’ve created more.

Residential street with semi detached houses. Each set of semis is about 3 comfortable parking spaces wide (as in, you would have room to manoeuvre in and out).

Each house has a dropped kerb on the non joined side, leaving non dropped kerb in the middle. You can park 2 cars bumper to bumper against the non dropped kerb, because the dropped kerb gives you the manoeuvring room. So each pair of houses ‘loses’ one parking space to dropped kerbs and gains however many cars go on the 2 drives. Why wouldn’t you encourage that?

Oh, and if no one had a drive, with only 1.5 spaces in front of each house, can you imagine how crowded the street would be?

@Lemonsaretheonlyfruit Oh yes, we also have the bin people! Those who, for some reason, think they’re more entitled than every other house on the road! And I find they’re always the most RUDE people! One couple (opposite us) are notorious for reserving spaces with bins and they’ve been having massive renovations done; scaffolding up, multiple skips, cars and vans parked all over 6 days a week, rubble and debris everywhere. They didn’t warn any of their direct neighbours it would be happening! Just planned/commissioned the work and went to live somewhere else for four months whilst it went on. Anyway, I saw them moving back in last week, next day... bins in the road.

@victoriashleigh maybe it's a London thing .. unless there are bin people across the land! Not sure about you but I do take some enjoyment out of moving them. I know I shouldn't. My next door neighbour who is also a v good friend was saying she wouldn't dare move the bins in case bin lady has a go at her. What on earth would she / the other bin people be able to say?!

Neighbour near me has a secure parking space which presumably they had to buy/lease with the house but they prefer to park outside their house on the street. If anyone else parks there on the rare occasions they're out, they get a note on the car telling them not to park outside [house number]. He's considerate though: he uses one of those plastic filing sheets to secure it to the windscreen .

On my street it's the people with dropped pervs who have massive parking anxiety. She seem to sit looking out all day, ready for a parking argument. Police been called, one lady served an asbo. I think I'm happy to sometimes have to look for a space for approx 2 mins. Possibly not outside my house. Plus I keep a front garden full of plants for water retention and wildlife. So, I generally dislike paving our gardens.

@CottonSock at dropped pervs . Brings a whole new meaning to the thread.

I actively avoid parking outside my own house as there's a lime tree that drops sticky shit all over it.

Oops, sorry about the dropped pervs typo.

Each house has a dropped kerb on the non joined side, leaving non dropped kerb in the middle. You can park 2 cars bumper to bumper against the non dropped kerb, because the dropped kerb gives you the manoeuvring room

My parents' house is like this. When the kids next door learned to drive and got cars, they went through a stage of parking in the middle of the nondropped bit even though they have room for 4 cars on their driveway but they've since learned that this is a bit antisocial and park on the exact frontage of their house.

Where I am the road was 1950s council houses, well spaced out, over the years driveways added, no issue...possibly tighter on public holidays with visitors but no angst. Now one side of the road has been 'redeveloped'. Each 'house' has 1 space at the front of the property and dropped curb all along. Our side is still as it was...but the people buying these shoeboxes houses all have more than 1 car, 1 has 4 (2 bed properties, so not large families) so now they park on 'our side' I can just about get both our cars on our drive but often they block our dropped curb, park across it and park along the curbed side Whilst I appreciate there is nothing we can do, if they park blocking my car I will be honking on the horn at 4am when I need to leave for work! Why buy a house with 1 space if you have 4 cars without a plan for where you can put them. One charmer parked his work van across my disabled 88yr old neighbours drive and when her family spoke to the guy he moaned he didn't want to walk up the road in the rain...it was ok for the DN to have to though...prick!

Davenot “ for this privilege, residents with a dropped kerb pay upwards of £1000 (depending on square meterage of dropped kerb so can be £££ more) to provide said dropped kerb in front of their property to access their driveway. With that in mind, it could (and should) be argued that any 'taxes' have been paid in advance”
Hardly! That covers the council doing the work, the admin, the legals etc.

And the dropped kerbs is for ever.

Then when the parking gets so tight that they bring in a CPZ people without a drive will be paying to park on the road while those who have taken up a car’s length with their dropped kerb, pay nothing,

Then when the parking gets so tight that they bring in a CPZ people without a drive will be paying to park on the road while those who have taken up a car’s length with their dropped kerb, pay nothing

Again, roads are not car parks, they’re for travelling on. Parking is incidental to the use of the road. Plus people without dropped kerbs and driveways would be adding to parking congestion as they’d need to park on the road too. The car’s length they’re taking up with their dropped kerb would be taken up with their car anyway.

I believe in Japan there is a requirement to prove you have off street parking before you can buy a car. I suspect that would be useful to implement in parts of the UK. Political suicide though!

In my street it is an expectation that you park one car outside your house and the rest are parked further away on the road not immediately outside a house. If you have visitors you leave them a space by parking further away. It has worked in the 15 years I have lived here. Obviously it wouldn't work in areas where parking is very tight but iin areas like mine it just requires everyone to be considerate.
There is a problem slightly further away with commuters leaving their cars on the road all day instead of using station car parks which winds people up.

Yanbu, for 99%. Although we have 2 bug bears on our road. The first is an illegal dropped double drive which actually now is over half a council painted disabled space. All residents encourage the person who applied for it to keep parking there as does the council who are in dispute with the owner who illegally dropped and rented the flats he converted. The council put out notices and the ll tears down. The tenants aren't happy but luckily for them people haven't yet parked over the whole thing. Soon enough they will as the council are undropping the kerb, certainly at the BB space, if not all!

The other bugbear is a couple of teens who visit their mate and park so poorly and selfishly they each take up 2 spaces.

Im in an inner city area with terraced housing near a shopping street and a football stadium. No-one gets to park outside their house.

I live on a small cul-de-sac. Everyone has at least 1 drive space but everyone (except us) seems to have more than 1 vehicle to park, and increasingly they are parking in the road at the bottom of their drives as it's a small road it makes getting out of our drive a bit tight! If we had a car across the bottom of our drive too we would probably be blocking everyone else in because of the way they park... pretty annoying! In some cases they have enough spaces to accommodate their cars but just prefer to have 1 in the road! Also because of this there's not really space for any visitors :/ it's all new build houses too so people knew how many cars they had and the space available before they bought. Annoying!

Also if roads aren't for parking on where are people supposed to park the millions of cars currently in use in this country?

Roads are for travelling on, if you can park on them too because it’s not against traffic management or impeding anyone else fair enough, but paying road tax/VED doesn’t bring with it an entitlement to park on the roads.

As for where else to park, well, a driveway is good. With a nice dropped kerb. I wouldn’t even have considered moving into a house without a driveway big enough for both cars.

I think people also forget that having a car is a privilege and not a right.

PrtScn

I think people also forget that having a car is a privilege and not a right.

It is but people also pay handsomely in most cases for their cars in terms of finance/insurance /maintenance and like to keep them in view if they can.

my street is a nightmare - my house has a partly dropped drive, council wouldn't let me drop the second half of it so the only way i can get onto my drive is one wheel uses the dropped part the other wheel doesn't.

Everyone elses drive in the street has a dropped kerb. The street is too narrow to park on the other side of the road so what happens is that people park across the non dropped part (even though they are quite clearly blocking a driveway) so either I get home and I can't get on my drive which means I have to park in the next street away and walk back , in the dark/raining and sometimes with shopping. OR i wake up to find i can't get off my drive and then have to go round knocking the 30 houses on the street to get it moved!

I know they aren't legally doing anything wrong but i find it massively inconsiderate - yes ok its not dropped but ffs its obvious I'm not going to be able to get in or out.