Neighbour’s Parking!

[WinterLilly]

Hello everyone. I would appreciate any advice on how to navigate this issue?

For context, we live in a new build estate so you can imagine the developers have not provided much by means of visitor parking.

We park on our driveway. However, next door (semi detached) park on their driveway. However, the past few weeks they have had at least 5 other cars (sometimes six) parked along the front of their house. The house across the road also has a visitor that parks in front of the house (we think parents who look after the kids) which also compounds the difficulty we have reversing out of our drive. Leaving our house has become an utter nuisance as it takes many steering maneuvers and parking sensors constantly going off as we try to reverse out. It’s got to the stage where I would rather walk to the shop to avoid the palavar of trying to navigate through all the cars. Furthermore, there have been many near misses as the cars prevent us from seeing oncoming traffic.
This has been going on for months now so the goodwill we had at the beginning is waning somewhat.

We don’t want bad relations with any of our neighbours so would really appreciate any advice on how to navigate through this in the most diplomatic way possible.

The parking in my street is a nightmare and it’s not even a new build estate, just simply people having too many cars.

Why do people not consider where they will park multiple vehicles when deciding where to live? Someone recently moved into a terracce on our street with one space on the drive. Wife has an estate car. He has a jeep. Neither knows how to park and basically abandon the cars often taking 2 spaces on the road. Then the jeep becomes a van.... bigger than a transit so what was 4 spaces becomes 3. Next a large camper arrives on a low loader so obviously not roadworthy and is mannouvred onto their drive hanging over the pavement and blocking light into their neighbours kitchen. The van has not moved from behind my car for several months, the camper just sits their and the rest of with 2 cars fume silently and dream of them getting evicted!

If you can reverse off your driveway, you can reverse on to it. It might take a bit of practice if you’re not used to doing it but seems like the best option.

If its a new estate do you pay a management charge?

If so I might contact the management company as there may be restrictions on parking.

If you think that someone is carrying out a business from home and its causing parking issues then I suggest contacting The Council as there may be planning issues or if someone is looking after children various registration issues.

The options I would take are reverse on to your drive*, so you can drive straight out or park across the end of your drive, so you're blocking the space.

*I understand this isn't possible when all the cars are there, but assume would be when they are not?

Also new builds have estate managers, so I would be raising the issue with them. They can take it forward with your neighbors. That is what you pay them for. You never know how people will react to criticism so you don't want to put yourself in a potential difficult/dangerous position. There's been many cases in the news regarding new builds and parking issues that have escalated. Which is what I would say to the estate managers -they have a duty of care to their residents. So they can deal with it.

You could park across your own drive, with enough room in front of your own car to drive out. Perhaps the message will get through that way.