Parking dilemma ongoing

[Suspiciousminds29]

Hi all, I am just wanting some advice on what action I can take. I wrote a post under another username a few months ago after I moved into my new home about an issue I was having with neighbours driving over my drive to access their drive without having tO ask the other household members to move their own car.

we have been here about 7 months now and it is still happening.. we never do anything like that because our drive is extra wide and granted we only have one car at the moment but I just think it is beyond bloody cheeky.

they basically drive along our long driveway until they can move their car in front of their other car. This is because the previous owners of my house removed a patch of grass to widen the driveway to the right so our original driveway is between their drive and ours but we park further to the right to avoid banging their car doors or anything (we have two young children)

I think you need something like this attached to sleepers and put on your side of the boundary line. They won't affect the covenant as they're not considered permanent. We had the same with our arsehole neighbour cutting across the end of our drive to get to his. His drive is a fair bit higher and his car constantly bouncing on and off damaged the edging of ours. Twice we paid to have that bit of edge repaired before we told him we were having our existing fencing extended to the top of the drive. He went crazy at me with lots of arm waving and gesticulating, shouting he was going to take legal action as we would be restricting access to his drive (he is too idle to trim his hedge so it's grown half way across his drive entrance hence using ours to get in. I did suggest he trim his hedge back wide enough to get his car in but he "didn't want to" and "shouldn't have to"🥺) We put the fence up. He still won't cut his hedge so parks on the road.

That doesn't matter. You're doing that side of the garden first.
The other side that is grass beside grass can have a bush planted or something else planted in the grass that will grow to a height that you can maintain (e.g. knee height).

There is no rule to say that you have to do both sides at the same time.

Just get the side of the driveway that is bugging you sorted first and then take your time with the other side. You could plant roses between you and your less annoying neighbours if you wanted to, a couple of plants will set you back maybe £30 or so and in the summer you should have lovely plants.

At the moment you're seeing this as trying to pit one neighbour (who is annoying the shite out of you) off against the other neighbour (who hasn't a clue about the first neighbour) in your head. It's not like that. Put the planters up between you and the annoying neighbour and sit back.

You could put a few planters along that boundary - or indeed you could simply get a railway sleeper and position it so that it's just on your side not theirs - and if asked you wanted there to be a visible edge so that your dogs and children knew where your property ends so that they didn't use land that didn't belong to their family accidentally.

I completely get your frustration OP. You need to be proactive and get a permanent solution rather than your temporary 'car blocking'.

My daughter was in a similar situation. She has a small lawn in front of her house and a drive down the side of the lawn and the house. Her neighbour (joined on) has just tarmac dive and a paved path out the front. The neighbour would park right up to the lawn and exit her car on the lawn. Obviously, this wore the grass away - over a two year period.

Although the new development is open plan she got permission (from the developer) for a low brick wall along two sides of her lawn. Most people have put boulders, low box hedges, plant pots along the boundaries as this appears to be a common problem, although several more walls have appeared more recently.

The neighbour now has to be careful - and exit her car onto her drive/path or she'll damage her car door against the wall. As a bonus it has stopped local youths swinging on a young apple tree (planted by the developers) in the centre of her lawn and also dogs from fouling in the middle of the lawn. (All this behaviour captured on camera footage.)

Just put the grass back or planters as pp have suggested.

Well said KosherDill!!!!

Buy a old banger and permanently park it so they can not drive past it.
Or do you have a friend who wants to park a caravan on your drive?
Otherwise planters, bollards or a chain fence is about all i can think of OP.
I know how you feel OP, so you have my sympathy.

I've got this in the back garden, it's brilliant. You can either drill down the support posts or push them into soft ground.

I get it OP. I'm in a very weird layout where my drive passes next doors. If I have deliveries etc and anyone stops on my drive outside his house he comes out and complains, yet when his Ex Wife drops their son off she parks on my drive and when he had a skip he drove on my drive to get around it on to his. It irrationally annoys me.

While it is lazy and entitled of them, do they even know there's a problem?

Think it is cheeky (and would probably annoy me a bit too) but for all they know it's okay. Think just asking them if they minded not to do it or put something decorative there is the only way.

I don't think they've got the hint from the parking in odd ways, so eventually it'll have to be your action to change it not hoping they're psychic. You'll give yourself an ulcer eventually with the way it's irritating you..

Is the developer still in business? If not then put up a fence as the developer is the one with the right to enforce the covenant, not your neighbour.

So just to clarify..:
you’ve never actually told them that this bothers you or had any sort of discussion about it.
you’ve previously started a thread re the same issue and not taken any of the advice or suggestions there
you spend your free time watching them do this on your ring doorbell and it makes your blood boil
yet still you say nothing,
if only there was a simple and obvious solution that didn’t involve your neighbours being psychic or picking up on your passive aggressive parking messages 🤔

You have had so much good advice on both this and your previous thread and yet the drama continues. Do something about it and take some action to resolve or keep blowing it out of proportion. The choice is yours.

You read my mind. Just speak to them, ffs.

I don't understand what they are doing. Can you do another diagram showing the line of travel they are taking?

OP, I think the problem you've got is that you want to do something about this but at the same time you're worried about what your neighbour's will think

Think of it like this, your neighbour's don't think twice about driving over your property, they don't care less about you

I treat people the same as they treat other's, it's only fair

I have only read your posts OP.

If I understand correctly what they are doing, I can't say anything his would really bother me.

It's always wise to try and be friendly with neighbours. You never know when you will also need the kindness reciprocated.

Big heavy terracotta plant pots! Nice spikey plants inside, David Austin Gertrude Jekyll or a nice Berberis will do it nicely.

Bit of a cheek, I would not be happy.

I don’t understand why it bothers you so much. Surely it doesn’t affect you and it saves them from having to move cars. You’re being very petty.

Why not just write them a letter saying this is my driveway, that is your driveway, I realise you may be confused so wanted to be clear. Please do not use my driveway.

Ooh, that's a really good way of framing it. You need the kids and dogs to learn their boundaries.

It's not petty at all to want one's property boundaries respected. These neighbours never even asked permission to use OP's driveway as a shortcut. Rude and entitled.

Plus she doesn't want them driving where her kids and dogs may well be playing.

You don't need bollards, just some large tub planters like the trellis ones linked above. Yabu for not doing this already it's so obvious.

I totally get it - we have had the same issue! It's not easy to approach the CF neighbours because you don't want a potential row! I wouldn't 'help myself' to their drive and so I don't expect them to regularly use mine!!

We went to the expense of creating a parking space at our front door so that we didn't have the constant 'car moving' thing. So, I will be honest, I found it a bit galling that the NDN was taking advantage of that! Mind you, we found the husband of the couple who previously owned it, pacing our drive one day because he was annoyed that our drive was wider than his!!! Duh - we have a detached on a bigger site; his house was a semi. Plus, we'd paid to have a parking spot in front of the house so it needed a wider drive to access it and took the space from our front lawn!

Putting pots on our drive would have left us little room for our own cars. Lockdown sorted it. DH and I mostly work from home, so our cars are more often in the drive, and DD1 moved home, and her car is now parked there too! I've no doubt they still do it if they can but it's not as easy for them.

However, I noticed this same neighbour one day years ago, filling in a puddle on our drive from the existing gravel!! When I went out, he said his kids were jumping in it!!! I wanted to say, control your bloody kids, that was my puddle and I liked it!!! I didn't of course but I thought it was a bizarre thing to do?!

Place some kerb stones along your border. They'll only run over them once. If they raise an issue I would act surprised that they're even concerned and explain that you're trying to teach your children to keep within boundaries for their protection.

As others have suggested, I'd get some big plant pots.

They are cheeky wotsits for sure!