Advice Please - Council's dropped kerb

[kasabianfan]

Hi, looking for some advice please. My end of terrace house (i privately rent) is next to a driveway that runs to the back of my house where there are around 10 garages either owned or rented by local residents. There is a dropped kerb to access this driveway. Directly next to the driveway is my lawn, of which, my landlady has said i can park my car on. To do this, i reverse up the dropped kerb onto the council driveway, then swing my car onto the grass and leave my car completely on my lawn. i exit in exactly the same path. Today i received a letter from my council with a photo they had taken of my car on my lawn, saying i am in breach of a certain highways act because i am crossing the footpath with my car without having my own dropped kerb specifically for my house. They gave me a link to apply for one, however my landlady has applied before and was rejected because the house is opposite a primary school and parking is tight already.

Where do you think i stand on using the existing dropped kerb? One of the garages belongs to my landlady (though full of her stuff) so technically we have a right to use that driveway to access the garages. The mums who pick their children up from the school always use the driveway/dropped kerb to turn their vehicles around or sometimes even leave their cars parked on it blocking access to the garages, so i cannot believe i have been sent this letter purely because i park my car on my landladys lawn! any advice/points of view on this is greatly received....i will be calling the council on monday to have this out with them! 😡

I think this is an issue between your landlady and the council and I think she needs to deal with it directly with them.

As a tenant, I doubt that you have any 'standing' with the council on this particular issue - as you are not the owner of the house or land.

The fact she doesn't live there probably means that she's not actually bothered about it.

Sorry, but I think you need to try to get your landlady involved.

What section did they say you were in breach of? Can you quote the letter?

Pass it to your landlady to deal with.

They said i was in breach of the Highways Act section 184

Today i spoke to the guy at the council who sent me the letter, and he said i'm in breach of their regulations, which include cars needing to be parked on a hard surface (not grass) and cars not being parked in front of a front door (this blocks emergency vehicles/workers being able to access the house). So it doesnt seem to matter that the grass plot is my landladys, looks like the council still rule it. I went into further detail about the parking issues on my street and explained further why i am forced to park on the grass....he said he understands and that i need to raise the issue with the council's parking team to see if they can arrange resident only parking restrictions. Sounds like a long process....ive told him until the council address the problem, if i absolutely have to park on my lawn, i will.

Tell the landlady to tell him that tarmacing over front lawns is one reason why so many places get flooded. Can't park on grass? Ridiculous.

www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1980/66/section/184

So this is the relevant section, I assume that they are say you are breaching their "reasonable conditions" per p1, but p5(a) seems to suggest that those conditions must allow access to premises. You have right of access to the driveway and to the grass (so you aren't unreasonably using the footway for access), so I really can't see how the conditions they are imposing can be reasonable. There presumably must also be local by laws re the grass thing so I'd be interested to hear what they were because banning parking on grass sounds unlikely!