CF parked on my driveway!

[SEMPA1234567]

CF has now been parked on my driveway for at least 3 hours! Husband home soon and won’t be able to park!

My question is what can you actually practically do about this, apart from giving them an earful if you spot them returning to their car!! 😂

A quick google says

1. the police won’t do anything (they might if it’s stoping you getting off your drive but not if they’re preventing you accessing your drive)
2. My areas police website says try contacting the council . The councils website clearly states they will not remove vehicles or issue parking charge notices for private drives

Also you are not allowed to block them in as this is an offence to stop them leaving and obviously you can not damage their car as this would be criminal damage.

Assuming you don’t want to break the law 😂 what are you meant to legally do if someone parks on your drive??

Has anyone successfully got any type of justice against a CF?!? Or can I now just go around being a CF never paying for parking and just using other peoples drives?!?

We had someone from a local company sit on our drive behind our car to smoke leaving fag buts. I may or may not have coated the wall they sat on with cooking oil mixed with their fag butt's. Some people do stuff that they in turn wouldn't want to put with. So think of something that harmlessly puts them out as they are putting you out without a care

It sounds like these rent-your-drive parking apps are rife for confusion and many innocent neighbours suffering as a result.

Surely they could introduce a simple system whereby people who rent their drives could put up a discreet little sign with a QR code or similar and their customer scan it and register that they're using it as agreed?

I can't imagine that most decent people who've made an honest mistake and parked on number 27's drive when their agreement was actually with number 29 wouldn't be both mortified at accidentally being a huge CF and also very concerned about the possible repercussions and safety of their car when an angry householder discovers it blocking them in/out.

I'd also like to see a new law requiring householders to clearly mark the number (or name, if not number) of their house so that all callers, delivery people and emergency services can easily see it from the road.

@SEMPA1234567 I'd post a note thanking them for renting your drive for the day at £10 an hour with an invoice for the daily maximum rate of £80 as it wasn't pre booked.

my house isn't on the road. Its off a privately owned drive. My door is numbered but you can't see it from the road and you can't see my neighbours' numbers either. Same in many other places on the estate I live on. Do you know about WhatThreeWords? No need for house names or numbers to find a house or other building, even a temporarily parked vehicle. You just find out the WTW for your front door and give it to people.

I had this. I padlocked the gates and told them my husband had the key, he would unlock the gate when he returned 5 hours later. They were there 4.5 hours later. They rung the police who refused to do anything.

Who cares? You have to inconvenience these CFs in some way or they will just keep doing it. I have done the lipstick thing several times with zero consequences.

Tip some Heinz vegetable soup over it. Say one of the kids got sick.

Hmm, I suppose it wouldn't work for households like yours, then.

I agree about WTW - that should make it so simple to be sure; but it's still unknown by so many people- I'm surprised the developers haven't advertised it a lot more.

I've also heard of a number of organisations of the kind you'd think it would suit perfectly refusing to use it or accept call-outs to a WTW reference - which seems bizarre.

Yes... some CF's parked on my parents drive once - long drive that ran in front of our house and the adjoining neighbours (off road, entirely, separated from teh road by a hedge, entry into drive clearly marked as being our house), driveway leading to a gate to the house and a double garage.

They were visiting next door, and had assumed that the end of the drive in front of neighbours house belonged to neighbours. It didn't, they had parking elsewhere. For some reason they parked right by our gate which as the driveway narrowed to single car width meant my parents couldn't get either car out of the garage and past it.

Mother did not take this lightly. She decided to position that weekends bonfire right in front of the car (it was parked right where we'd routinely have garden waste bonfires anyway).

When they eventually came out she didn't let them go until they'd made a donation (by cheque, yep that long ago) to a charity of her choice.

More recently we've had several people park in my Dads driveway - its a track that runs around the side of his house as his carport is round the back. There are a couple of corners you can park a car on as you follow it round, but they'd bizarrely (or to avoid squishy wet ground perhaps) parked on the narrow parts of the track (both times, different cars).
He chained the gate and went to the pub for the evening on foot. Never got to the bottom of why on either occasion, as both times he had to leave the gate unchained the following morning for the oil delivery tanker, so they did a flit before he got up. Not sure how they knew or where they were as his gate is not visible from any other property (and the nearest is half a mile away.)

I discovered that it was happening to us. People were parking while DH and I were at work.

Our driveway gravel was being churned up: we thought that it was people using our driveway to turn. It was actually parents from the local primary parking up whilst waiting for their offspring.

You'd have to be a 24-carat solid gold, weapons-grade CF to brazenly park on a stranger's drive - and then call the police out on the homeowner - rather than realising you've lost out this time and humbly trying to negotiate with the householder!

that's why it shouldn't be a law.

😂

Similar happened to my pal down the road. She came out of her front door to discover that a scaffolding firm (subcontracted by the council) had dumped a load of scaffolding in her driveway.

"You're not using your driveway..."

She told them to shift everything. (Most people here are homeowners but the house next door to my pal's is council property.)

Ooh now this is a good one.
I would definitely make sure they couldn't get away easily. I don't actually care what the law says, it's so fucking cheeky to park on someone else's drive, I don't actually know what would make someone do this!

I had similar to your diagram once and blocked them in, yes it meant the neighbours couldn’t get in their drive either but I lost it. 😁. Neighbour was supportive when the6 arrived.

@Drfosters
"there is very little homeowners can do if someone parks in your drive as it is civil matter" Indeed. I've posted an RAC link to OP stating just this. 😊

I agree. It will be even worse for this CF if half the street are furious with them, not just OP.

You're probably right - but I still think it should be strongly encouraged where appropriate.

I can't think that many people would actively choose to run the risk of an emergency ambulance crew having to waste precious time searching up and down the road for their house, for the sake of a cheap sign or sticker.

Could a well fitted potato find it's way up their exhaust pipe...?
They wouldn't know until they were down the road and it went bang, followed by the pleasant odour of jacket spud.
Disclaimer: I may have read too many Beanos as a child.

😂😂😂

It does work. One of my cousins did this to an annoying uncle.

OMG, this is BRILLIANT! Some CF blocks OP's parking space and she can't find out who it is for hours, and then "someone" else blocks in the CF for hours and, Oh dear, they can't find out who it is for hours .....
I LOVE this - it's such a cunning plan even Blackadder would be proud of it! 😂😂😂

Every time there is a parking thread in this vein the OP either goes out and the car is gone when they come back or they miss them because they are eating dinner. There's never a satisfactory outcome when the CF is caught and the OP turns into a banshee.

This has happened to me more than once. I block them in. The first time it happened the driver said he’d parked on my drive because it would have cost him £10 to park in the nearby car park and I said I would move my car to let him out if he gave me £10 to donate to charity - which he ended up doing after some aggro.

The second time it happened I told the guy that he had inconvenienced me for 3 hours because I couldn’t park on my drive so he could come back in 3 hours time and I’d move my car then 😂. Which he sheepishly did.

Basically I’ve decided that you have to be outrageous and get yourself a reputation as the mad old bag at number 5 otherwise people will take the mickey and keep doing it. I’m haven’t had a problem with this for years now!