Neighbours from hell dispute over shared driveway

cats4ever

Ulfar I'll try and scan an image of our paperwork. Or draw a plan.

needahome_2

heres a suggestion for you and serious one aswell, if you definetly own the land and they are not allowed to park there, then why not contact one of these clamping companies that are manned by some heavies to patrol your land for you.

cats4ever

I wish I could afford it.

BitterAndTwisted

It sounds to me like the driveway goes down the side of the OP's house and the NFH's house is behind it. If the NFH cannot park on the driveway where are they supposed to park?

cats4ever

They have parking for about 2 cars infront of their house(in their garden) which is all paved . But they can't be bothered to park there because they have to turn into their garden and then reverse back out. They also have a huge sliding gate at the bottom of the driveway.

tek-monkey

cats4ever, go to maps.google.com and type in your postcode. You can then see a map of your area, and can switch to satellite or aerial view to see the actual houses. Take a screenshot and post that?

Alternatively, using maps.live.com allows you to actually view the houses at an angle and rotate around them to see from different angles. Not everywhere is covered, you may not be, but you need to look for the birds eye view option at the top. If this option is available, and you don't mind losing your anonimity, this would give a better idea.

Fire_Fox

cats4ever wrote: »

Thanks PasturesNew.
I couldn't have said it better myself. Its as if you just read my mind. This is what I've been trying to explain all along. Our neighbours new what they were buying into so why are they acting so childish now. They don't have to say and do the things that they are doing. They can talk to us and if they can't afford the costs then we can arrange something between us. We maintain all the fences on either side of the driveway and even clean it up every third month. In the winter it gets really bad as. It seems as if we have all the leaves in the area blown onto our driveway and we clean them up regularly. Yet they can't even clean the driveway once a year and we are the ones that get attitude from them. They stole our bin on two occasions. Their bin was half way down the road so they took ours and the second time they claimed that they had two bins when they moved in and we took theirs.

To be honest I think you need to pick your battles. I've paid for all three fences to be replaced on my previous property, because both sets of neighbours were (lovely) housing association tenants and it wouldn't have been done until the fence fell down otherwise. It's you who want the drive clean and maintained so swallow the fact that you will have to take responsibility for this.

Parking on your driveway so you can't access it, and risking your family's safety needs addressing. I'd get a giant boulder as suggested, a CCTV type camera if you can run to that, and start keeping a diary of all the events. I would speak to your neighbourhood policing team informally, so you know what can and cannot be done, and they know to keep an eye out for you.

guppy

It may be too late for this, but you might want to consider mediation.

The original covenant for the other house to repair another house's drive seems unworkable from the start, and your new unreasonable neighbours were probably made aware that there is no real way of enforcing this when they bought their house. They don't seem the type to worry about such things.

I think the best you can hope for is to try and get to the stage where you can have normal relations with your neighbour (i.e. just ignore each other), or at best, come to an agreement where you share the cost of repairs.

Your neighbours are essentially scumbags, and the fact that you are seeking advice here, rather than by going round to set alight to their house, suggests that you are not well suited to stooping to their level.

I would try and stay out of their way as much as possible, while doing the minimum necessary to protect your interests. Escalating things will not help and nor will court. Obviously if they do anything criminal then by all means involve the police...but if the police get any whiff of this being a neighbourly dispute (no matter how ones-sided) they will run a mile and won't come back

I definitely agree you should keep a diary. CCTV may make things worse, but might be useful if they start doing anything illegal.

You have my sympathy - just try not to make things worse. Its not worth it, even if right is on your side.

PasturesNew

I have an idea .... you have a garage that you can't use as you have no car. Could you rent out your garage to somebody big but lovely?

BitterAndTwisted

cats4ever wrote: »

we don't get to use it at all. We either park on the road outside or our front garden to avoid having a dispute with them. Our parking area and garage is right at the bottom (towards the right) but we can't use them.

Actually, the OP does have the right to use the driveway but can't/won't.