Which neighbour is being unreasonable?

[Neighbourshateeachother]

Neighbour A runs (ran) a small online business from home (pre pandemic). During the lockdown as more people were buying online business went up. Due to nature of the business a large lorry would visit neighbour A weekly to deliver stock and sometimes Ups / DHL would make visits to collect / deliver.

Neighbour B has young children and likes them to play outside and didn’t didn’t like the ‘busyness’ of the street which is a nice quiet cul de sac. Neighbour B reported neighbour A to the council and got the business shut down.

Neighbour A found out neighbour B was responsible for this and told everyone in the street both in person and on the street WhatsApp chat.

Other residents of the street now feel awkward. Who IBU neighbour A or B?

One of the reasons people buy in cul-de-sacs is the lack of traffic. Weekly large lorry and multiple DHL/UPS would make me unhappy too.

Ultimately the council must have agreed with B.

Council said it was fine to run a business as long as it wasn’t an inconvenience to other residents. Neighbour B found it an inconvenience and pursued complaints until action was taken.

B is unreasonable to think children should have any particular ‘right’ to play in the road, however quiet and pretty spineless to not at least have a conversation with neighbour A, before going nuclear and getting the council involved.

Sounds a bit weird that the council went straight for closing the business down though?

Where I live there's a rule saying nobody can run a business from home for exactly that reason - so people can enjoy the quiet of the cul-de-sac where they may have invested in a property with the specific purpose of being away from that kind of traffic.

If there's a similar restriction in place for where you live, neighbour A was most definitely unreasonable - clearly neighbours felt her actions were restricting their enjoyment of where they lived, even if she didn't. If you want to start a business, know what the rules are you need to abide by, it's not that hard.

Although...if it was genuinely one delivery a week I wouldn't be fussed about it tbh and would not think to report it, it would be like getting fussed about your neighbours having their groceries delivered surely. When you say "sometimes" UPS/DHL/similar would be round, how many times a day are we talking? Because that would get annoying quickly.

Businesses need to be run legally - if it was being run legally it would not have been shut down. Residential areas are residential areas. You might be OK about it now but if you came to sell and struggled as would be owners aren't happy with living next door to businesses in residential areas.

If the business was being ran from home legally surely it wouldn't have been shut down

I think it's highly unlikely you know the full story, unless you're neighbour A

You’re not hearing the full story - councils don’t shut down businesses because one neighbour objects to a once weekly delivery. Either that or you’re not telling us the whole story.

I need more info on why the business was shut down?

Presumably what’s happened is that Planning have got in touch and said you may not run a business from a residential property without getting planning permission for change of use of your home. Quite right too in my opinion ….I mean potentially where could this end otherwise? The house being turned into part- delivery depot part-house?? With dozens of vehicles every day? Imagine living next to that, and what it would do to your property value. Planning laws are there for a reason.

There is no reason why, if the business is a viable one, they couldn’t secure suitable alternative premises. If it’s only viable because they were running it from their kitchen table with no rent well then, there’s your answer.

I'd be petty enough to have couriers delivering multiple items to me as a residential customer out of spite 🙈

One weekly delivery and couriers for others doesn't sound excessive. I'd see the neighbour's point about complaining if it was daily trucks, but once a week with smaller vans in between is no different to a lot of my neighbours seem to get for standard parcels.

This seems made up by someone who doesnt know how businesses work and assume that they must all operate from commercial premises.

Well, if they got shut down then it's because they were breaking some rules. I don't see why they closed the business rather than renting a registered address and just continuing to work from home though. If it was online sales only and they didn't have customers coming in and hadn't changed the house to a warehouse or anything like that.

B was an arse though. A lost their means of making a living so that Bs kids could play in the street and I'm not surprised they're cross.

A should rent a space to fulfil legal requirements and do as much as possible from home.

It does sound like B overreacted over what is essentially one lorry a week. I know we get plenty of Amazon, Hermes etc deliveries (our Hermes guy recognises us and has told us he's left stuff in the shed when we've run into him elsewhere ) so I'm sure plenty of houses have similar.

There's a house on our road that has set up a Botox clinic in the garden which annoys me as there's constantly a car parked blocking the pavement meaning I've to go in the road with buggy, toddler etc, and even more infuriatingly that's absolutely no need for the bad parking. A few deliveries wouldn't bother me though.

Meant to say, I have an Etsy shop and work entirely from home. My bedroom is also my work space. You can be self employed and work from home quite legally.

You can run a business from home as long as you aren’t causing a nuisance to your neighbours. For the council to tell A to desist there must have been enough lorries and vans every day to constitute a nuisance. We’re not talking about 1-2 vans a day here.

@IveGotASongThatllGetOnYNerves

Meant to say, I have an Etsy shop and work entirely from home. My bedroom is also my work space. You can be self employed and work from home quite legally.

..in which case, you couldn't be shut down by the council.🤷

Both unreasonable.

B shouldn’t expect roads to be traffic-free for children to play in.

It’s also inconsiderate be getting frequent, ongoing, regular deliveries from large lorries to a small residential street. Something like house renovations would have an end point and deliveries to the house would be needed, whereas A’s business sounds like it could be conducted from an industrial unit, with the right level of road infrastructure.

B didn’t get the business shut down. B doesn’t have that sort of power! B simply reported what A was doing, and then the council would have referred to their existing policy/laws before making the decision to tell A to shut their business down.

Yeah I find it strange that you can have a business shut down just for having a delivery more to it I suspect.

You're not telling us the whole truth here op. A business is not going to be shut down because another neighbour doesn't like a few lorries. There's more to it.

Why were they shut down? That doesn't make any sense

Yes, windywuss. Which is why in my first post I said they must have been breaking some rules. 🤷‍♀️

They should have found commercial premises for their business if it had expanded so much.

During lockdown?

But I’ve already explained, council said it was fine as long as it wasn’t an inconvenience to other residents. Neighbour B kept making complaints stating it was an inconvenience

Did Neighbour B try talking to Neighbour A, to find some compromise, or did they go straight to the council?

If they didn’t, then, in my view, Neighbour B was the unreasonable one, for not trying to resolve the matter amicably. However, if they did try to address the issue with Neighbour A, and didn’t get any willingness to compromise or to find a way to lessen the impact of the commercial activities on the neighbours, then A was unreasonable.