AIBU to be irritated at new neighbour (parking)

[FrozenLimeMargarita]

Visualise a London road of the slightly wider villa-style Victorian terrace houses. The road is single track, one way. Parking is in this parallel to the road format:

/|-@-/|-@-/|\

They are little bays marked up for two cars lengthways, then the bay terminates in a traffic-calming outcrop with a big oak tree before dipping back in as the next bay starts then pops back out with another tree and so on. These bays are on either side of the road. There are 10 bays in total and 10 houses. So spaces for 20 cars. There is little to no other parking locally as it is more of the same style streets on either side.

However, these bays do not belong to each house they are just a version of on-road parking. Whilst we all have never agreed to just use the two nearest your house, the road has a consensus that there are 20 spaces for 10 houses so that's has been what has happened over the years. Each house has two spaces and it's the two spaces nearest your door. We knock and ask, or trade off places if there are visitors or a household has an extra car. For example Vera* down the end only has one car but Betty uses the other space on an agreement for when her granddaughter stays, which is most days and so on.

A new neighbour moved in 6 weeks ago and has......

One VW camper (takes up a two bay)
One works van (takes up a two bay)
A tonka toy type truck (takes up a two bay)
and a family of 5 each with a car

So while I understand none of us own the road but buying a house with the knowledge that you have enough vehicles to wipe out over half the whole roads parking is just straight-up CF behaviour.

AIBU

I feel your pain OP! My neighbour directly beside me has 6 vehicles, 2 which sit on the drive and 4 on the street, the neighbour directly opposite has 5, 2 on the drive & 3 on the street. Then when partners show up in their cars on a Friday night and don’t move until Monday morning it becomes infuriating trying to find parking. As someone else suggested I’d ask the other neighbours to space their vehicles out so they’re unable to take up 2 spaces, how inconsiderate of them to think this is okay?

If you cut down the trees and made more spaces, these people will get another car. It's only a matter of time. What a troubling attitude to nature and your community they have. It's not troubling them though, so please give them hell with your packing strategy (and look into council options too before taking them completely off the table)!

These neighbours sound like utterly awful people who value all the wrong things.
So sorry op it's amazing how much stress one selfish household can cause

definitely speak to the council about TPOs.

I don’t have anything to add here, I’m just invested in your story about BCH. They sound like the worst kind of people.

People with that amount of vehicles should look for a property with a drive.

@FrozenLimeMargarita

I think anyone can apply to have a TPO on any providing the girth of the trunk meets minimum requirements. My friend was a TP warden for our local council.

Leave them a message and ask. Then at least if they assess and agree then you'll know the trees are safe.

What an awful family to have moved in.

In the country where I live, it's illegal to leave any vehicle on the street overnight, including on the street you live in. You need to build, buy or rent an exclusive, dedicated parking space for each vehicle you purchase; in fact, you cannot legally purchase a vehicle until you have had your parking space checked out and signed off by the local police station, and your proof of parking will need to be presented to the place you purchase the car from. If you leave the vehicle on the street overnight, it will get swept up in the 2am street patrol and hauled away, and you will have to pay a big fine to get it out.

That might be too draconian for the UK, which has allowed itself to get into a mess by trying to be an American-style car-centric society WITHOUT building American-style cities, meaning you have cars jammed and crammed into every inch of narrow, terraced streets.

But one thing the UK COULD do is start to establish some limits on car ownership in areas without offstreet parking, by putting residents' parking laws in place in all areas without offstreet parking, outlining spaces with paint, and allowing one dedicated space per building; anyone who wants an additional car could be required to rent a space in a separate car park or similar facility and will have to walk to their car. (Oh, and in places where streets are narrow, stipulate a maximum vehicle size to stop pavements from being completely blocked by massive cars.)

Eight vehicles is appalling, but the reality is that you are going to get pisstakers until you start actually setting some laws in place to stop this.

Also, the housing crisis needs to be tackled at warp speed by building like whoa. Five adults living together and all needing cars, is happening because young people can't afford to move out, in most cases. We will be seeing more and more cases like this unless a shedload of few flats get built sharpish.

Not really practical in terraced residential streets, is it?

I agree with this definately, but twts parking in bays to save them, while leaving their driveways empty for hours at a time don't help matters. We even had a particular ignorant one who left his driveway empty while on holiday, and had the people they went with (who don't even live here) park in all of the bays for 2 weeks while they went away. This was so they could come back and swoop their 2 cars into their empty driveway at the end of the holiday. I have no words for this level of cheeky fu*ery.

Can't afford? Where I live the vast majority of the housing, even up to very high end, defiant have off road parking. It's a Victorian town. Even where houses are set back from the road they have garden, not drives. I assume there are planning reasons they don't switch it.
What an ignorant view point, both about housing stock and in your attitudes to people you see as beneath you. The little people shouldn't complain, right?

Doesn't, not defiant ffs.
On the app so can't edit

I get your irritation too.

We live in a mews development. All fine one space each, one visitor and a turning circle to get in and out.

One owner, inherited her house from her DM, and as a landlord rented the house to a business for their staff.

The three staff, have three cars plus visitors. They park two cars tandem across the turning circle. Has prevented deliveries, ambulance etc.

Deeds say ‘full and free access’ across the area of the turning circle. Despite complaints to tenants, landlord, business, repeatedly asking them to move for a delivery. It continues.

Landlord says she owns the patch in the middle and produced an agents plan from when she bought. She does, for maintenance but not for parking.

Noone is interested, the deeds seem worthless. Infuriating.

Just because something is legal doesn't make it reasonable though does it? Are you honestly saying you think it is ok for one family to take up more than half the parking for a whole street? Really?
Ok, so where you would draw the line? Would it be ok for them to take up 75% of the spaces? Or what if they bought even more cars and tonka trucks and maybe a minibus or 2 and filled up all of the spaces so no-one else in the street could park? Would that still be ok? What if they then bought a few more, so they had to use the spaces on the next street? All legal according to you, but can you really not see how unbelievably selfish and entitled this sort of behaviour is or how shit that would be for everyone else???

That's ridiculous, I'm guessing a street meeting won't cut it but start with that, then it's go to the council to ask for controlled bays, max two spaces per household (a neighbour can still hand their permit to another neighbour.

For people saying ok where can this family park. Commercial vehicles that take up more than one space shouldn't be on residential streets, you need to arrange for suitable parking eg workplace. Extra vehicles like campers again you need to pay for storage

Is it permit parking? Each house on my Victorian Road has two parking permits per house. If there is a third car, they have to park somewhere else.

You could ask council to change road into permit/resident parking only if you don't have enough space.

@FrozenLimeMargarita by any chance do you live in SE London like myself, perhaps around the Telly Hill area?

It is basically how it works where I live! not crushing the cars, but towing and fining, yes. I think it would be a step too far for the UK, but some sort of middling restrictions on vehicle numbers and sizes ought to be brought in.

Also in London, living on a street with a CPZ and I think you should reconsider asking the council for a resident’s parking zone. Eight vehicles for one house is ridiculous, they need to be renting a garage if they have that many vehicles. You mentioned that parking permits cost money, but this is the upshot of ‘free’ on street parking - eventually someone comes along and points out you don’t own the road and they can legally park there, and it’s not free any more. Your elderly neighbour may be eligible for a blue badge which would likely mean her (and her carers) are exempt, but CF neighbours would have limits on how many spaces they could use.

the alternative is faffing about moving your cars until they eventually try to poison an oak tree. Be serious.

I agree about sizes and numbers. In my small Victorian seaside town next to nobody has off street parking and the only car parking available otherwise is at the leisure centre and station.
I think work vans should have to be located elsewhere, as a business expense, and some sensible number of permanent vehicles and visitor passes decided.

How does it work when visiting other people? If everybody who owns a car has to have a parking space where they live that's fine but presumably they don't have a spare space for a visitor?

This. My parents road became a residents parking area and they are only allowed two permits each plus visitor hours on the app. So I think pushing for residents parking with the council may be the best way forward.

But I completely agree with you. Although legal it’s just bloody selfish to buy a house without parking for all the vehicles!!

I work as a district nurse - we have permits for residential areas when on visits so carers woukd/should be able to have to same do they can park

In a city, people would tend to use public transport most of the time, but if you come by car, you’d generally find one of the small private car parks (they are dotted around here and there) and pay for parking there, then walk to your friend’s house from there. Depending on circumstances, parking briefly on the street during daytime can sometimes be OK, but if it’s more than a short period you’d need to find an actual car park and walk, or risk getting a ticket. Overnight street parking is always a no-no, as it’s classified as blocking the public highway.

In the countryside, where of course most journeys longer than walking distance tend to involve a car, most people have driveways with some extra space. Here, most houses are new as there is not the tendency to preserve old houses, so rural houses are built to have some parking capacity (I really love the look of English villages with the pretty old stone houses, but the combination of rural living and old cottages with no off street parking can be quite tricky to manage), but also if it’s really rural, there is more leeway for bending the rules and you can probably find some random around spaces where nobody minds you parking a car.