To want the car to move!

[honeyandbutterontoast]

Looking for honest opinions here because I’m aware this may make me seem like an AH.

I live in a road where the majority of houses don’t have drives. We park on the road. I knew that when I bought the house, it’s not permit parking but there is usually space for two small cars in front of my house. It has never been a problem in the time I’ve lived here, occasionally if there’s a local event I’ve had to park up the road for a few hours if I’ve been out, or for an evening.

Four weeks ago I came home from work to find a big car taking up both spaces outside. So I parked elsewhere. The car is still there.

Nobody has been to it, or moved it in that time and frankly I’m getting annoyed. I have to now park a long way from my house (else I’m in someone else’s space), which has been annoying with heavy bags of food shopping, or if I’m going out with the dog/DC. It’s meant if my mum has visited she’s also had to park elsewhere, again not ideal.

But what can I do? No point leaving a note as nobody has been to the car in that time (it’s right outside my window so I would see). None of the neighbours know who it belongs to either. It seems a stupid thing to get stressed about but I just want to be able to park outside my house!

The pavement.

I'm in a similar situation OP but to compound the issue I've got new neighbours to boot and where the previous occupier had 1 car they have 4.

Report to police they will get it moved for this purpose .
It will be taken to a vehicle pound.

Outside my house is MY carpark space it's what most neighbours do .. you know to keep the peace not to cause murder .

It may have been stolen and dumped? Have you tried the doors? Do you have a local FB page, if so take a photo and post it asking if anyone knows the owner , you can try phoning 111 non emergency number and report it as abandoned, but the police would not normally get involved if it is parked correctly, but it will be logged on the system.

I have been in a similar situation op, similar parking down my residential street as yours. Usually the neighbours have consideration for each other and try and park outside their own houses where they can, but recently a car was left outside my house for a whole 12 months, 12 months of not being able to park outside my house, 12 minths of having to look at thus car through my living room window. It was taxed, insured and it had a full up to date mot. Didnt know who the owner of this car was, untill the mot was up, and the car had to be moved to be taken to a garage. It turned out to belong to family that lived 12 doors down. They had bought the car for their son who wasnt evan 16 yet. They had planned to keep it for him, untill he had legally passsed his test. I politely asked them if they would please park this car outside their own house, rather than mine, so I could park my car there. They replied that they couldnt, because they park their own car outside their house. So I gave them a few choice words, and needless to say the car was sold the very next week. Some people just take the mickey.

Honestly stop with this attitude, because you'd be damn annoyed and bet that if your neighbours "space" was taken - they would park in "yours"

I'm in this position now - my road is a free for all even though I'm the only house without a driveway - they all have 3-4 cars. They make sure when I leave they reserve my space for their guests to.
But what can I do? I'm in the process of getting a drop curb permission! so I can't complain!

No, you do expect that. You expect everyone to park outside their own house.

Four weeks is taking the piss. Our road is permit and we had an enormous ancient motorhome taking up 3 spaces for a month.

Not much you can do but I feel your pain. Ours did go after a month - unusual not to need a car for that long so you could check with Police. May well have been stolen and dumped as others have said.

Why would they need naming and shaming, they’ve done nothing wrong.. they’re entitled to park on a street in front of houses if it’s not a permit holder only zone.

It's not your parking space.
It's just not. The car might be annoying but it's got as much right to be parked there as your car.

If you want to have your own parking space you need to move. I had on street parking and it was a massive pain the arse, especially with a baby. I moved.

I live near a garage and have had several cars left on my street. It’s a small street that’s awkward to park on due to it being a curved hill at the best of times so if someone dumps a car in the middle of a space, it messes up everyone’s parking.

Ive reported the cars/vans/trucks after 7 days of non-moving. They are always really banged up so they do look dumped. They seem to move quickly after they’ve been reported.

In regards to having to park your car so far, while it’s nice to consider neighbours, if everyone just moved a little bit on no one would be too far away from their car. No one’s owns the part outside of their house if it’s the road.

Oh OP I sympathise, this would irritate me too.
I live on a road with street only parking for all the houses, no one has a drive and I don’t expect to be able to park outside the house all the time, but nothing winds me up more than when people park in the middle of what could be two spaces. Why does one car need half a cars space in-front and behind it?

I'm a little shocked by this. If the car is taxed and mot'd and parked legally it is lawful to leave their car parked on a public road. Buying a house / property does not give you an automatic right to the public road outside of said property. It's like the stupid people who place cones outside their houses... it's nonsense. You need to prioritise your needs when moving to a property which is why many people pay more for a house with parking, especially in large cities like London. I am a Londoner born and bred and have been in the same position as you .. I had a new baby,
Pram etc and no personal parking space and I hated it and struggled. I moved out of London as I wanted to be able to park on my property as this is important to me. Your sense of entitlement to use a public road as your own personal parking space is frankly ridiculous... I'm sorry but I cannot see a legal or moral argument in your favour. You should rather count yourself lucky you have been able to use a public road for free parking for so long. I am sorry but you either put up with it or move to a property with parking. So in summary yes in my view you are being unreasonable on this occasion.

Put it in a plastic sleeve though in case it rains and becomes illegible!

The road doesn't belong to any single person, outside of your house or not, whether it inconveniences you or not. Unfortunately it's just something you'll have to live with.

So many of us with no offstreet parking don’t have to live with it though because we have considerate and respectful neighbours.

I don't have off-street parking but the reality is in a lot of streets if every house has a car or two there's just not enough room for everyone to be outside of their own house.

Jesus. Ya think??
Op even said that.
Did you even read the bloody thread?

Good grief I've not read a thread with quite so many sanctimonious twats on it in a long time.

We all bloody KNOW she's not entitled to park there. She's only said it about twenty times, ffs.
But it is a constant inconvenience and she's NOT willing to pass that inconvenience on to her neighbours, so it is solely affecting her. She's allowed to complain.

I can't believe that people are suggesting reporting somebody to the police for parking safely in a legal, unrestricted space. You might as well report somebody for walking on the cracks in the pavement, or report Asda for having sold out of your favourite washing powder! As PP said, this kind of behaviour would soon get you on the council's list of people to watch out for/vexatious complainants/antisocial troublemakers/potentially vulnerable person who might need a visit from social services.

Even going by your own personal 'rules', how can you be so sure that it isn't somebody who's just moved in to a house on the street? Imagine if it were and you'd already employed some of the antisocial (and possibly criminal) behaviour suggested on here: egging the car, smearing butter over the windscreen, letting down the tyres, leaving abusive notes under the wiper... all for your new neighbour, alongside whom you have to live for potentially the next 30 years.

All of that unnecessary unfriendliness and pointless enmity, instead of being a good, considerate neighbour who gets along well with the others - and then, whenever you do come to sell, you end up having to tell all potential buyers of the neighbour dispute if it's led to the natural conclusions that it probably would if you'd already instigated a campaign of harassment.

How would you like it if you happened to be lucky enough to get the space on the public road outside your house and then not move your car for four weeks - gone on holiday, illness, broke and can't afford petrol until payday, only occasionally need your car or whatever - and somebody reported you for 'abandoning' it?

What about people who also don't have drives, but who live on roads with double yellow lines all the way down them? Where do they have a 'moral right' to park? If you had one such road next to your (unrestricted) road, would you make a point of only parking your car outside your house for half the time (or maybe a quarter of the time, if theirs is a long main road with four times as many houses on as yours), and then park elsewhere the rest of the time, so as to leave the space for somebody on that neighbouring road to park in - because you're a kind, considerate neighbour?

It's madness when people invent their own 'laws' based on nothing more than what they reckon 'should' be 'the right thing to do' (which, incidentally, usually benefits themselves), and then seeks to 'enforce' it through antisocial and/or vigilante action.

Anybody can complain about anything they want - nobody is stopping them; as long as they only grumble to anybody who will listen and don't waste the valuable time of the police or authorities by vexatiously reporting perfectly normal, legal activity.

Even regularly parking your own car outside your own house is potentially inconveniencing your neighbours - especially if they or their visitors are elderly, disabled, have young children, have large items to take to/from their house, are emergency workers on call etc. and you are fit and able-bodied. They might subjectively need your spot more than you do, so how selfish to just take it every time you pull up and it happens to be free at that moment, eh?

Maybe it's just me, but I personally think it's a lot more sanctimonious to assume that you should have more right to a first-come-first-served public facility than other people, just because you find it convenient - and to complain when you don't get your wishes - than it is to simply use an available public facility without any drama and calmly get on with your day.

That was a response to BlueMonday, btw - MN only works on one browser for me and even that one is so very slow that the 'edit' function had timed out before it could be bothered to fully load for me.

This is MN: some folk on here think that people should be shamed/feel ashamed for having a poo in a public/work toilet cubicle - or for ever farting when somebody else could possibly faintly hear it.