Neighbours have numbered their house…

[UprootedSunflower]

Not with the post office formally, just decided it’s awkward to have a name instead of a number and started using it.

No houses here have numbers and never have. All named from before the area was built up.

It’s really really annoying as they have named themselves ‘one’ but they are set well back from the road and have a high gate/ alley to enter. Mine is the first obvious house front at the end of the road. So I get their post a lot.

It also makes delivery drivers get angry- no one else has numbers, like we should, or knock constantly to ask which end of the road number one is (most houses are set back so it’s me who gets the brunt).

Ive tried talking about it, but they are determined houses need numbers and it’s easier. I’ve tried stopping the postman, but it’s constant agency staff changing over.

So… I started simply marking anything through my door with the made up address and not our names ‘not at this address’ and popping it back in the post box. Aibu? They have got really cross!

They are the kind of people who order constant parcels and get post still

Which country are you in?

We've lived in a newly built house for 20 years and it didn't have a number, the deeds have no number, search Royal Mail or the Council website and no number. None of the houses in our street have numbers. Neither did our last house in a completely different part of England.

It's a nightmare, the road is about four miles long and its name changes several times along its length. The Council absolutely refuse to provide additional road name signs and the Royal Mail postcode stops a mile away from our property.

I add gps coordinates, W3W and explicit directions to our postal address for deliveries, but all the delivery drivers ever take notice of is the postcode. When they finally find us, they say as much. We're on the main road, not up a track like most of the other houses around here.

Unlike the OP's neighbour, everyone around here makes a big effort to clearly identify where their house actually is.

Same. The houses on my street range from about 150 years old to about 60 years old. None have numbers. Same with all the older streets in the village. It's only the bits built later, 70s onwards, that have numbers.

What issues?

I saw on the news once that a family had a car accident but the parent was unresponsive and the child had no idea where they were, the emergency services asked him to download w3w to his phone so the ambulance could get to them it apparently worked.

I've had nothing to do with w3w until this thread so I've no idea what could possibly be the flaws.

See my later reply.

We might have lived on the same estate, a particular pleasure was living at no 35 cross street, when cross street went 1 to 33 and then cross over the wide playground and turn the corner to 35 to 39 cross street. With cross lane and cross road and cross crescent being broadly similar layout and one street up. Also very pedestrianised, I've been back since and all the grass bits,and wide avenues of trees and playgrounds have gone, replaced by physical roads. Even the very wide spotted path that cut through the whole estate is now a road. It's gone up in the world, it's a renowned area now. It was a shithole when I lived there.

It wasn't cross anything but I have forgotten the name of the street now, it was 40 years ago.

Where I live one side is 1850s terraces numbered 1-20. On the other side is 1930s semis with names because the numbered houses were there first! The names are the legal address because they don't have numbers.

Obviously some words sound the same as others. Obviously there are lots of different languages in the world.
However, without being madly pedantic W3W will still work in most occasions. Certainly in this occasion the post should be able to be delivered to the correct location!!

How annoying! Are they new residents? Sorry, if this has been asked before!

so how does the post office currently know how to deliver your post?

We live in a village on a long country road where all the houses have names, not numbers. A few years ago, when we needed to call an ambulance, they had to drive slowly along the road in the dark, trying to make out the names of the houses. I wish we had names and numbers as well....

I believe it’s something like the postage act 1765 that started it all but there’s been other bits of legislation since that have changed things - if you go to your local councils street naming and numbering policy it should have it all. One of the key reason all houses are fundamentally numbered is to enable emergency services to identify the premises, hence why changes should be run through the local authority. For others saying about what happens when new houses are built on a street, then they are usually initialled (82a, 82b) or the whole street can be remembered and yes, I have come across a whole village that renumbered itself as the situation was chaos

go to your local councils street naming and numbering policy it should have it all.
This is what it says on my council's website
"Properties in the borough are found in both urban and rural locations. Postal numbering exists in the urban areas, whereas any rural areas consisting of small settlements may not have postal numbering schemes and properties may be identified by property name only."
I can't find any evidence of our house having a number or our road having a name on any official documents or websites.

One-ie McOne-Face

You cannot simply decide to number a property. An application to do this must be made via the local authority. All property is registered in this way. The local authority will then send out advice if the new name or number in this case, to emergency services,, who will then register this on their own databases. It's quite straightforward but not as simple as just giving it a number, and the local authority may reject it if numbers are not used in the rest of the street, as confusion could lead to catastrophe in an emergency situation.

Write your local council and ask their advice about this problem.
You might want to mention that whilst the current homeowners may be innocent of bad intents, this name change could essentially cause identity problems in the future.

They are lucky you are doing that, if it was me the post would go in the bin.

Neighbours have created a problem, there was a system that worked and they are trying to independently change it and it’s not working. It’s really not the OPs problem to go to the council and post office and change that.
I would send everything back as - not known at this address. The neighbours either need to revert to the system that worked or sort it out themselves. And stop ordering stuff online to be delivered until they do.

"..if you go to your local councils street naming and numbering policy it should have it all."

From my local council:

"When there is no existing numbering system on a road (often for historical reasons or in rural areas where properties are more dispersed) then a property will have a name. Any proposed new house names or changes to house names must also be approved by the street naming and numbering officer in order to ensure that there will be no duplication or confusion caused by the proposals"

So, their policy specifically envisages that there will be new house names.

You can't argue with stupid @UprootedSunflower . Keep doing what you're doing.
I would add a note somewhere (gate/front door) that you only accept mail/parcels for 'uprooted sunflower name'.

In Scotland most of the tenement flats are numbered 13/1, 13/2, or 1/13, 2/13.
In my case my utilities have been switched 3 TIMES in error by the utilities company because the person living the opposite numbered flat to me has tried to change hers.
It took so long to sort out each time!!!
I also receive their mail. With MY door number on it 🙄
She gave me her number, I now msg her if I have letters. I don't take parcels.

Most streets are two way, so surely what side of the road the odds/evens are depends which end of the street you enter by.

Yes, like I said - if the street comes off a main road (and possibly ends at another side street) the main road entry is used as the start. If neither street is particularly significant then it would be the one nearest to the town centre.

Its not an exact science but seems to work in the majority of cases (or it does in West Yorkshire 😂)

This only appears to apply in towns and cities, not rural areas, villages and unadopted roads. It also only seems to apply to developments as they arose, rather than ever having been done retrospectively.

As @kierenthecommunity said, this idea of left and right does seem to exist. This is from the policy from my own local council:

The numbering of roads will be in accordance with the following:

1. Number 13 to be omitted
2. As a general rule all roads will be numbered with odd numbers on one side (usually to the left hand side) and evens on the other (usually to the right hand side). Small cul-de-sac developments may be numbered sequentially.
3. The Council’s numbering sequence is final.

This is not true.

I have been surprised to learn on this thread how many people believe all houses have numbers. Symptomatic of the town/country divide perhaps?

Villages, hamlets and rural areas often have unnumbered streets. Quite normal out here in the sticks.

Our council policy for naming and numbering streets says "for dwellings in existing unnumbered roads it is essential they are officially allocated names, which are registered with the emergency services". It also says that only rarely will properties without numbers be given numbers (or properties with numbers be re-numbered) in situations where it is deemed to be causing confusion.

When I asked how the fire brigade found you in a randomly numbered housing estate they replied 'They had smoke signals'