Parking covenant on title deed

[PotteryLottery]

Our title deeds show we have a parking bay in front of our house wirh a covenant specifying that any private vehicle can park there for 24 hours during weekdays. Usage at weekend is not specified.

Our Residents' Association is saying that the space is communal i.e. not our sole access, and we must not prevent others from using it by marking our space with our house number.

1. Is simply marking our space with our house number preventing anyone using it? It is not a bollard.

1. TheResidents' Association is also saying they have now received legal advice informing them that they have a responsibility to maintain these communal parking bays.

However, they have not done so for 44 years (we have lived here for 16 years) as they previously understood they had no legal ground for involvement in the communal parking bays.

Can they suddenly reclaim the parking bay that I have parked in for 16 years outside my house and which appears on my title deed?

So it says you have a bay outside your house but anyone can park there?

If the bay is on your title deed you own it and are responsible for it. The convanent provides a right for others to park there up to 24hours, then what? If no right to return fine, but otherwise someone else can park there permanently. Since it's your land and responsibility, do you have insurance in place should some damage themselves or their vehicle while parked there.

Yes. But what is the point of it being on my deeds if I have no more access to it than anyone else?

Do you pay a fee to the RA which covers its maintenance? Could be all the parking is on people's deeds and the RA are managing them on behalf of the residents.

We pay an annual maintenance fee to the RA for other communal areas, but to date they haven't been involved in the parking bays.

I'm no expert but surely if it is showing on your deeds as your space then it is your space?

You’ll have to post the precise wording of the provision relating to parking otherwise everyone’s just left guessing.

Depends on wording on title ,whether you own it or just have right of use

Please see the attached. Apologies for the delay in posting.

Based on that you don't own it
You have a restricted right to park

That only says that u have right to use it for up to 24 hours.... it doesn't say u own it

The parking space isn’t yours, you just have a right to use it under the conditions

You need to post the rest. It is a sub clause which means the rest of re provisions are relevant.

Depending in the rest, that part looks to be very badly drafted. Ie limited to 24 hours during weekdays. That could mean all day every day or 24 hours max during the 5 weekdays

It is a huge doc so I'm not sure which bit to post.

The parking space is directly in front of our house and is marked as our property within a red line on our deeds in the same way as our en bloc garage is marked within a red line.

So are there other spaces that are communal? That clause only makes sense to me if the space directly outside your house marked as per the rest of your land is yours, and then elsewhere on the development there are a number of spaces (marked orange?) where anyone can park, subject to the confusing time restriction.

Which country are you in, and why does the residents association have legal powers?

There are other spaces. They are on neighbours' title deeds with the same covenant as ours.

I am in England. I'm not sure that our RA has legal powers but they seem to think that can reclaim the space which we have marked with our house number.

Can you post the plan from the same document?

The space is within the longest oblong, between our house and our garage.

You need to post the whole clause - this is (iii) so we need the statement, plus (I), (ii) and anything underneath it there is an (iiii) and so on.

I’m a conveyancing solicitor. You really need to get some proper advice rather than this piecemeal attempt on a public forum (I’m not criticising you for that). Please consider dropping in to your local solicitor and asking someone to call you. If someone came in off the cuff to me I would no doubt have a look for them as I am probably a sucker, though I take the view that the odd bit of no-fee advice is good PR for local would-be clients. There may be a solicitor local to you who feels like I do, or just bite the bullet and pay for some advice.

Thank you, yes, we will pay for advice as it's obviously more complicated than we thought and it doesn't seem right to post the whole doc on here.

Honestly OP it's probably pretty straightforward for someone who has the whole document.
Good luck.

If your neighbours have similar situations (one parking space shown within their boundary outside their house, similar wording regarding usage) what do they do? Do people not just park in their equivalent space and leave others' free?
I.e. Whether or not you mark your space, do other people ever park in it? Do people just stick to their own spaces?

Our immediate neighbours have similar deeds and we all try and respect each other's spaces. But some houses do not have a space allocated and they are challenging our right to park there.