Experiences of living on a private road?

[2026namechange]

Looking for a new house - a “forever home” (although I find the term a bit twee!). There is one I love however it is on a private road. Is there anything I need to be aware of about this that might be problematic?

What she said

I owned a rental on a very small private road of 6 houses. One was an utter cunt who thought he owned the whole road as he was the only man. Sadly another woman was renting through a shit agency who didn’t give a fuck. It was a nightmare from start to finish. It can work well if the people are nice and normal, but you never know who they may sell to. The gates broke frequently. And then they needed repainting I had a very reasonable quote split between 6 was only £50 ish each. One objected and said she’d paint it herself for free if we all bought the paint. I sold mine 5 years ago and it still hasn’t been done. Now I can laugh at it

Ours was wonderful. Bins were collected with no issues. Once a year, we all put a bit of money in a kitty, bought some gravel, hired a roller, showed up with our shovels, and resurfaced the road together (8 households). Then had a BBQ together. Oh, I miss that road so much.

Ditto

We were a private LTD co.

The management co liquidated and we bought it off them and I sadly made every owner a director. That was a HUGE mistake. I did so much work. For no payment, sorting their shit out, doing accounts, negotiating between arguing owners. The management and insurance fee per year was under £300 per house. Less than £25 per month, including a very small sinking fund for major works & annual gate maintenance. And they still argued over that.

Never ever ever again

Ours was fine, just a track really and nothing needed to be done whilst we lived there anyway

I live in a small private close, bin lorries can get in an out fairly easily.
Each property pays a fairly small amount, £50 or thereabouts each year for road maintenance to a management committee, (basically all of us owners. We have built up quite a large sum over the years in case major repairs are needed.)
People are quite prepared to do small repairs to the bits of road directly outside their own property.
Also there are some low level lights that need occasional maintenance, but there are no shared green spaces.
A couple of the houses are rented long term and I believe the owners rather than the tenants pay the annual sum. Works ok for us.

My late parents house was on a 50s development with parklets planted with specific trees. At some point those that were elms succumbed to disease and there was some confusion over whether local administration would replant another tree and over which type of tree should be replanted as some of the houses had tree names.

Upshot of this is that some parklets have big bushes planted by home owners who didn't wait to find out what the answer to above was and some have trees planted more responsibly by local authorities. I should say these are not council houses.Think more leafy home counties esque.

Access around the parklets is not the status of a private road but - again - some entitled type owners have interpreted it like that.

The last version of the trees on the small parklet outside my late father's house had a new tree to replace a dead one when my Dad was 93. Instructions on best care of the tree during its early growth were posted through his door. He looked after the tree, it's still doing well.

At the point of sale the status of access and parklets came up and the answer was woolly. Somehow it's like living on a verge for which you don't have full responsibility for but are obliged to behave responsibly towards. There was no definitive answer re the access road, but the council had recently resurfaced it when the actual road got resurfaced.

Anyway, the only point to saying all this is that it can be as clear as mud as to what constitutes a private road/lane access.

Our one is fine. Only 7 houses, no gate, no verges or grass to maintain. Bin lorry comes down, as do oil tanker for delivery (no mains gas) but has to turn at bottom of road - so everyone needs the whole stretch to be passable. No management committee, no pooled fund.

I live on one, but we are lucky in that all bar one of us gets on! The good things include privacy, summer BBQs, a tractor comes to trim the hedges that line the lane. We are on gas and septic tanks, which need dealing with sometimes, so our lane has adequate space for those (plus extra parking spaces).

You have the joys of dragging all of your bins, bags and recycling trolleys up to the top of the lane (unless you're lucky to have a pick-up with enough space to pile them all in).

Potholes... one neighbour thinks that potholes are a good thing as it encourages everyone to drive slowly (we do anyway, as there are children about). The rest think that it damages your car. The potholes keep the children entertained when they have their toy tractors and diggers out, as they get filled with gravel and soil.

You spend quite a bit of time directing delivery people if some of the houses have names instead of numbers, and re-delivering parcels that have ended up at the wrong house.

We also don't have street-lighting (there are two lampposts, but no lights), so some of the neighbours have put solar lights up. Oh, and if you're rural, you spend some time herding sheep out of the way of your car and back into their fields!

Thanks! It does seem I need to investigate the bin situation. Lights doesn’t bother me - we can always put a security light up. All of our public roads are full of pot holes that never get filled anyway so no difference there I guess and I don’t mind filling them with gravel occasionally…we are also constantly giving directions to our current house as three different developers build houses in the 90s and 00s on the same piece of land so nothing joins up and number 27 is about 200m away from number 25 🙄

Seems as though what I really need to find out about is about utilities and bins and what arrangements are in place for sorting. My parents lived around a privately owned green for 25 years so I’m not necessarily out off by dealing with a management company etc.

if there is a sign anywhere on the road that says "private road" (and that status corresponds with the council's record of what is / is not, public highway), then legally speaking Google streetview is not allowed to upload photos of properties on the road to its own website without permission.

Your parents can lodge a formal complaint and ask to be removed.