Sorry this is long to avoid drip feeding!
We live on a small little housing estate of 14 houses in a very small, mainly friendly, rural village.
Houses 1-5 are privately owned ex council houses, 6-14 are bungalows, a couple privately owned but most are still owned by the local authority. They have very low turnover of residents and are mainly occupied by older people or people who have mobility issues.
Earlier this year, the resident of no6 died and for the first time in about 8 years we have a new couple living here, they moved in four weeks ago. They have no visible disabilities or a blue badge that suggests they need specific parking.
it’s been a nightmare with parking since they moved in. Thankfully they are only living here on the weekends as their child goes to school in the nearby small city which is about 12 miles away and is in a different local authority so they stay in the city Sunday-Thursday nights (who knew you could use a council owned property as your weekend in the country place).
Anyway. The estate has a car park without marked spaces or allocated parking but can hold, if everyone parked sensibly, about 22-25 cars. Plus, houses 1-5 park outside their houses. There is enough room to do this and still have another car drive around the L shaped road into the car park, which we all use to turn around in.
the top of the L is too narrow to park on and have another car pass - you can’t even have two cars pass on this stretch (unless they are really small cars!)
There have been occasions when house 3 has parked a little too close to the corner (green star) and has been scrapped by an ambulance trying to get around the corner (we have a lot of elderly people who have needed help from emergency services from time to time). If there is someone parked there, you often have to mount the pavement on the opposite side to get around without hitting it.
as I’ve said, we’ve all lived here a while and tend to park in the same places, without too much grumbling. We don’t (in the main) get precious about guests parking in front of our houses for short visits for example, or workmen and delivery drivers. It’s no big deal to park in the car park, it’s a really short walk, and no one has babies or children in pushchairs to consider these days). Only house 5 really needs to park outside their house as the lady is disabled, but has never needed to get it marked as such, because we all just take it as being her space.
I’m sure you can see where this is going.
New residents keep parking in the two spaces in red. Everyone has to mount the curb and squeeze around the corner to the car park. If available they will also park in houses 4 and 5 traditional spots. House 4 grumbles but knows they aren’t entitled but it’s causing real problems for house 5.
On the weekend, there was a big commotion in the street and when I looked out of my window, the new people were screaming at the residents of 4+5 that one of them has scrapped their car while it was parked in the corner red space. Other neighbours came out to see what was going on (I didn’t, I just watched from my window!).
The new couple were awful - swearing at everyone saying they had every right to park where they wanted (which they do to a degree) and that there were going to find out who had scratched their car and ‘knock their lights out!’
It’s a small area and the news of this spread and today a group of the older residents have knocked on my door.
They have asked me for report the parking concerns to the council. Apparently the whole estate have already done so, and the neighbours involved in the fracas have reported the threatening behaviour to housing, and they only living here on weekends. Also, the local grapevine has it that the new people have been moved into the estate from a neighbouring village where there were evicted for antisocial behaviour and robbing from the old people! They’ve also reported that it’s not being lived in full time.
The older residents have also started a petition for the council to add double yellow lines along the top of the narrow L road and to paint in spaces and allocate them.
The awful parking does affect us, we also have to risk either scratching vehicles or mounting the curb (and potentially scratching the wall on that side).
Are we being unreasonable to report them so much after they’ve been living here such a short space of time? Should they be given a chance? They literally kicked off the first time they were gently approached (because of concern of damage for both their cars and ours!) but are the long term residents potentially being a bit precious?