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

Same here. We don't even have road names. We have precisely one house number in the entire village - 3 Xname Xbuilding - and no one can work out why, because we know the full history of that particular corner of the village, and there was never a 1 or 2 Xname Xbuilding! You couldn't realistically number the houses because of the layout of the village. You'd have delivery drivers going round in circles, trying to work out which way the numbering flowed.

The names - some of which go back centuries - are much more practical, as most of them give some hint about where they might be found, eg houses named for the non-residential building they're next to, or for the shape of the road/land/stream they overlook. If a delivery driver asks me where a particular house is, I can't always remember off the top of my head, but if I stop and think about it, I can usually work it out through a process of elimination and knowing where the stream/church/farm/track/ruins etc are.

It isn't OP's responsibility to pretend 1 Apple Street is an actual address.

But isn't that exactly what OP is doing by writing "not at this address"? When the letter addressed to

Mr OP Neighbour
1 Apple Street

ends up back with Royal Mail with "not at this address" written on it, isn't that short for "I have had this letter delivered to my house at 1 Apple Street, but my name is not OP Neighbour, and nobody with that name lives at this address"? Nobody would know who has sent the letter back or from which address, and it would just been seen as a straightforward "OP Neighbour has moved away".

Anyway, I used to read gas and elecricity meters, and I think house numbers should be compulsory. Absolute nightmare having to find Rose Cottage on a street with 60 houses and 3 Rose Cottages 😒

I don't have a house number either and it would annoy me if I regularly got post foe other people because they didn't display a sign at the frontage of their property like we do that clearly states the name of our house.

Do not accept any parcels for them and return all post makes, 'WRONG ADDRESS'.

You're talking about the nouveau riche bourgeoisie there, my dear, with their fake tudor beams and garages.

Proper old-monied land owning types with real tudor beams and stables always have a name and no number 😉

Be that as it may, the solution is not to randomly assign a number to your un-numbered house.

There are only 4 of us on our road and most of the names are somewhat descriptive of the building (e.g. The Old Gatehouse). However, I would love to see a system like they have in some countries where all houses must clearly display a sign with their road name and house name/number by the road to assist emergency services.

You can’t just arbitrarily give your house a number. It has to be agreed by both the council and the Royal Mail and a formal notification issued.

I’d email your council’s street naming and numbering officer.

Talk to the local council office for it is they who sort out property addresses.
My hpouse hada name only and from the name it could have been any one of 5 properties spread out over 300 metres but the post and deliveries always found me. Now I have a road name and was provided with a fancy blue number by the Maire (France). I changed a house name in the UK because it was ambiguous.
It was 'The Cottage' but then so were several other cottages but I think mine was the oldest cottage (400 years).

We moved into a house with a name and no number. The name is quite a factual one, think along the lines of 'The Schoolhouse' (it isn’t that). So hardly 'twee' or 'cringey'.

We then discovered some time later that it was in fact also number x, which isn’t a logical number at all given the jumbled nature of the road layout in our old village - the number that should be next to it isn’t next door.

However, Royal Mail do occasionally muck things up by delivering post to another 'The Schoolhouse' in a completely different village a few miles away despite the two postcodes and the names of the recipients being quite distinct…

I don’t think OP is BU: this is a problem created entirely by the neighbours and they can’t just unilaterally decide to call their house No. 1 because of the impact it has on everyone else in the road.

This implies different https://personal.help.royalmail.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5156/~/ive-received-someone-elses-mail

Op should just report it to Royal Mail

I used to live in a house that was No.1 when the village was built, but it had since had a whole housing estate added next to it, so our little run went 5-3-1-43-45-47. Used to cause all manner of confusion! I now just have a house name (different house).

I think this is a problem of the neighbour’s causing and not for the OP to sort out tbh. She’s not their postroom!

I’d be inclined to pop it back in the post with “no such address” written on. I’ve recently been getting mail for houses that used to be next door to mine but have been demolished! I just write “address no longer exists/ demolished” and throw them back in the postbox.

The other alternative would be to collect everything and let them come looking for it but that’s such a faff I can understand OP not wanting to.

Neighbours can be a real blessing or an awful pain.

This is the solution!

You are absolutely doing the right thing, it is not your responsibility to be disrupted or inconvenienced by other people's wishes or demands when they are being unreasonable to start with

You should ALL have numbers. House names are pretentious. Many years ago when I delivered newspapers as a kid, I loathed people like you. The same goes for letterboxes that are almost at floor level... be more considerate !!!

No, they don't.

Only the LA has the power to number houses. Royal Mail has to accept changes made by the LA. It does not have to accept any changes made by anyone else.

If you apply a name to a numbered house, you must continue to clearly display the house number and include it in your address. Royal Mail do not have to deliver anything that does not include the house number in the address, although they usually will.

If a house has a name and no number, any change of name needs permission from the LA. The property owner also needs to contact the Royal Mail Address Maintenance Unit to register the new address and check that it is satisfactory. If Royal Mail is unhappy with the proposal, the official address of the property will not change.

I doubt OP's neighbours have bothered with any of this. OP needs to inform the LA who may well tell the neighbours to stop.

Stick a random number to wherever the post is dropped, you don't have to use it.
Putting not number 1 doesn't work, all they see is the number 1 when in a hurry.

There is a process for naming or numbering your house - not least to make sure that you don't cause confusion by sharing the same name / address as other properties locally. This is usually done through the local authority, who will then make sure it is updated with the post office and land registry. There is a fee for this but it is not usually very much. From what you say, it sounds like they haven't done this.
Visible house numbers/ names are also important for emergency services. Maybe you could post something like this in the local Facebook/ WhatsApp group.

I agree. I would put "this address does not exist" on any returns to make it clearer.

People are generally very entitled when it comes to expecting NDNs to take in parcels. A couple on our street were sending everything to the elderly woman next door. She was getting very upset at being constantly disturbed but was worried about causing a row by saying anything. She asked me to intervene and their attitude was they need to get stuff delivered while they're working and she had nothing else to do all day so what was the problem. We've now set up her Ring doorbell with a recorded message so any deliveries that are not for her are refused. They have the cheek to be angry they can no longer use her hallway like their personal sorting office!

Have you ever been to a rural location where names rather than numbers are the norm?

They are unreasonable to not put a big 1 on their gate, even if they've made it up.

Sidenote: It is absolutely delightful that this is still going on, after George Mikes taking the piss out of it in the 1920s! (page 29)

I'm surprised that the Post Office haven't addressed this already. My in-laws lived in a little rural hamlet on an unnamed road and the houses all had names based on the jobs of the original owners (they were built as part of an estate about 150 years ago). About ten years ago the Post Office decided this wasn't workable and worked with the local authority to name the road and assign numbers to each of the houses. You could contact your local authority or the Post Office to find out if they are willing to do the same for you, although the downside is that you will also be assigned a house number which it sounds like you might not want.

I voted YABU.
Because the issue seems to be not their house number or name but the fact that their house is not visible from the road and is difficult to locate.
Your house doesn't "look like Nr 1" - it's just easiest to see/nearest to the house the ever-changing posties and delivery drivers can't find.

If you had a regular postie, the neighbours could be Nr1, Nr2067 or Whatevername Cottage and they would get their post anyway.

The neighbours should of course label their gate/house/alley properly - that's the main wrong that they haven't done so. I'd definitely rise it with them and refuse to hand-deliver anything until they have done it.
However be prepared still to get the parcels that the delivery drivers couldn't be arsed to deliver down an alley/round the back somewhere.

YANBU to find this whole scenario intensely irritating though!

I only have a house name and no number on my house, but it is obvious which number it is as the two either side of me do number theirs.

The way my road/area is laid out even a number wouldn’t help. Although my house has only ever been known by its name (even in the pull down menu) it does also have a number (that has never been used). It’s a 7a type number and no one would have a clue where that is as it doesn’t correlate with any neighbouring houses.

I often get calls from delivery drivers asking where I am. They’d still do it if I used the number.

Rather than writing 'Not at this address', I would put the name of their house in capital letters and cross out number 1. Alternatively I would be tempted to hang onto all their post and parcels (and sorry you were out slips) so they have to come round and collect it and then you can repeatedly make the point that this is a problem of their own making which might persuade them to put up a sign on the unmarked gate to give delivery drivers a fighting chance. If they refuse I'd just graffiti it on there myself.