Neighbours blocking shared alleyway - what can I do?

[ParkingTrouble123]

We live in the middle of a row of about 10 terraced houses.

Parking is a nightmare round here. The road is a busy main road so there is often nowhere to park out front. As a result, several of the houses in our row, including ours - have turned half of their back gardens into a driveway, accessible via a shared lane running along the backs of the houses, which opens out at both ends onto the side roads.

3 of our neighbours (2 on left and 1 on right), who have NOT put a driveway in their garden, frequently park in the lane, sometimes overnight. When one of them does it, it’s not a problem (well, it’s annoying as it means we have to reverse the whole way out, but we can get out). But a few of times a week we’ll be blocked in on both sides.
Most of time when we’re blocked in we don’t actually need to get out, so it’s only started to be an issue in the last month.

Most of the times we’ve been blocked when we’ve wanted to get out, ONE of the houses will answer the door and move their car, but there’ve been a few occasions where the first house we’ve knocked on hasn’t answered so we’ve had to go to the other one (adding 10 minutes to our journey). Then, last week, my husband needed to drive to work due to delays on the train line, and was knocking on both doors for 20 minutes (at half 6 in morning) until in the end he had no choice but to get the train to work because NEITHER of them answered the door!!!

At that point we left a note saying please don’t block us in, you’ve made us late for work, knocked on your door and no answer. For 4 days it seemed to have worked, until yesterday we awoke to find the lane blocked on both sides again!!!

Obviously we’re going to have to talk to them properly, but my question is, say one day we really need to get out and they’re blocking us and not answering the door, is there anything we can do ourselves (legally) to get it moved? Since it’s a private lane and not a public highway I believe the police wouldn’t get involved (I BELIEVE it is shared between all the houses but I’m not sure as we rent). Is there anyone else we could call? Or anything else we can do?

As it is rented I'd just park somewhere else where I can't get blocked in and leave it to the landlord to deal with.

If it was my own if enforce my rights, but it's not worth the hassle for a rental. Tell the landlord though as they may want to enforce.

Definitely give them a taste of their own medicine and block them in by parking at the end. Don’t answer the door quickly either.

If I was your husband I’d give them a knock every morning bright and early on my way to the train. People are lazy and if parking becomes less convenient aka earns an early wake up call them may decide to go elsewhere to park.

I used to live in an end terrace and the footpath that led down the side of our house belonged to us but the other houses had right of access.

When we bought the property, our solicitor advised we were not allowed to block the pathway due to the right of access for the other adjoining houses, it was shown in the deeds. Anyone can obtain deeds for any house, could you perhaps get a copy and pop an extra copy through the letterbox.

Not sure about the law side of things, I would imagine it to be some kind of civil matter.

I like the air horn idea though! 😆

At 6.30am houses and streets are silent.
There is no way they can't hear knocking, unless they wear earplugs 🤨

They are ignoring you.

Time to play hardball.

@Justleaveitblankthen Honestly my partner would not hear knocking on the door while asleep 😴

Could be ignoring them though!

Park at the end of the lane so youre able to get out. If you also block them in, bonus

It’s time to block them in and play them at their own game. Refuse to answer the door. I doubt they’ll do it again if they realise you are going to do it to them.

As others have said, the first step is to find out whether there is any right of access to the OP's at the back, and if so, is it for vehicles.

The OP would look daft sending letters, using the car horn or involving the police if it turned out she had no right to drive along the lane.

And if they also block everyone else in at the same time...?

Parking at the end might work, until they couldn’t get down the lane one day and decided to start doing it too.
have you got a local PCSO? Ours is brilliant and loves dealing with this sort of thing. Neighbourhood police team is what to google.

Play them at their own game. Once they see how annoying it is, they might stop

What if the OP doesn't actually have right of access across the lane? Might be best to find that out first.

If you pay the rent of a house that was advertised as having off road parking and you can’t access it, could you enquire to your landlord about having a reduction due to the lack of access?

If OP parks at one end of the alleyway, won’t the neighbours just go in the other end? Thus it won’t necessarily be a massive issue for them?

Or am I not understanding it correctly due to severe lack of diagram?

Yup. Diagram please.

It is common fir terraced houses to have rights of way across land for access to back gardens however they can vary in who, what and why are able to access them. Your first step will be to find out if your neighbours are doing something wrong in the first place (not just that it is inconvenient to you) and downloading a copy of your deeds will be a good place to start to check the specific wording of the easement but you may also need a copy of theirs. Hopefully the deed will say something along the lines that right of way exists only which would mean they should not be parking there. Once this is established, you can send them a letter reminding them of the wording etc.

I second what @PuppyMonkey says:
If OP parks at one end of the alleyway, won’t the neighbours just go in the other end? Thus it won’t necessarily be a massive issue for them?

Or am I not understanding it correctly due to severe lack of diagram?

I think this is your best option op - ask for a reduction and see what your landlord says. I'd imagine they are fully aware of the issue I'm afraid.

Sorry for the disappearance, we had a busy day yesterday but here is a diagram.

From what I can gather (although I can’t always keep tabs on who arrives when), the blue car doesn’t seem to park there when the green car is already there, but the green car frequently parks there when the blue car is already there, so they are the ones actively and knowingly blocking us in for the most part.

We can’t park at the end of the lane without blocking nos. 10, 12 and 13 from accessing their drives, although I think we could park behind no. 9’s garden and block the green car in if we needed to make the point, as no. 9 don’t have a driveway.

I’ve sent a message to our landlords asking for clarification on the status of the lane, so we’ll see what they say.

They both just need to park outside 4,5,6 so everyone then can get in and out

Which house numbers do they come from? If they both parked bumper to bumper between 4,5 and 6 no one would be blocked in. Could you ask them both to do this?

And hassle them as often as possible, even add some unnecessary trips, to let them know how much easier life would be if they weren’t so inconsiderate?

The whole point about renting versus owning is if a dispute escalates to any sort of official capacity it can devalue a house and it is not the posters property so she doesn’t have to worry about that aspect of it.

Yay a diagram!

Wow that is really inconsiderate parking, no wonder you are cheesed off. If advertised as a property with parking then the landlord has a lot to answer for.

They’re all parking directly behind their own properties. But yes, asking no. 8 to park behind no. 5 would also solve the issue for us (though might annoy the residents of no. 5), I could suggest that to them too...

To be fair to the landlord, this hasn’t always been an issue… they started doing it last year when we were having car issues so were rarely using our car for a period of about 6 months...