Endless stress with the mechanic who lives opposite!

AndromedaWay

I live in a six-flat building, on the ground floor. There are four off-road parking spaces in front of the building, which should work out fine as only three of the flat owners have cars.

However, there's a auto repair shop opposite us. The man who runs it also lives in the house opposite; the business is off-road, behind the house. And he is the most obnoxious person I have ever met.

Every night, 5pm, he starts moving cars he's working on from the behind-the-house bit. At least five, sometimes more. Why he does this is beyond me (he clearly has space for them as they're back there during the day...), but he does it. He blocks up the entire road, parking on the pavement, on kerbs and here's the kicker, in the parking spaces for our building. :mad:

I'm disabled; the walk from the driveway is a push for me as it is, as I have bad issues with balance, sensation and pain. I need the space.

I've tried to talk to him about blocking up the spaces for our building -- which he has NO RIGHT TO USE! -- and he just tells me to park on the pavement, which takes the walk to the flat from just-about-manageable to not-a-hope-in-hell. Maybe five extra metres isn't much to him, but it is to me, and he shouldn't be parking there anyway. He will move cars but he takes his sweet time doing it, and sometimes it's a hassle finding him as he's in his workshop or on the phone.

So that's problem number one. When parking is available in the off-road spaces, he has zero problem blocking us in. That's either with the vehicles he's working on in the usual 5pm exodus, or his own vehicles (he has a van and a car). Again, he will move it, but he takes ages and is very dismissive. The worst was a half-hour wait when I was up at the crack of dawn for a doctor appointment; he actually made me late because he clearly answered the door in his PJs and then went back to get dressed. He parks over a drop kerb to block us in, so that's definitely illegal.

Finally, he's got two "project" cars parked permanently in the spaces in front of our building. So only two spaces are available at any given time.

I've tried to rationalise it for a long time. I have a myriad of health issues, and there's always something more pressing to deal with. My husband has tried to reason with him but it doesn't work, he just nods and smiles and then carries on as he was. I always told myself: he does move them eventually, so... and I just leave it.

But yesterday, I came home in a lot of pain and low and behold, his van was blocking our space. I nearly burst into tears when I realised what was going to happen. And it did. My husband asked him to move, said it was urgent, but it still took 20 minutes because he "couldn't find the keys".

So, I'm done. What he's doing is clearly wrong, but I'm not sure yet how wrong. I figure the first issue is the blocking in, so that's a police/council matter, I assume? I've made calls today to both and am waiting on calls back. The two project cars is more difficult as it's private property and I need to check which flats actually specifically own what, I think. It might be something for the management company or individual flat owners, though I have considered reporting them as abandoned. I've started taking pictures every time it happens, and keeping a diary too.

I just don't understand people like this. Even if I didn't have a disability, to willfully and knowingly cause so much inconvenience on such a permanent basis is downright unbelievable. It's like all the suppressed frustration has bubbled over and I'm just furious now

tl;dr The mechanic next door is making life difficult, and I needed to vent about it and what to do next!

MothballsWallet

Have you tried your local council's parking enforcement department or the local police community support team?

Take some photos (if you can) of the offending parking and try and email it to your local police force via their website - they'll certainly take a look at what he's doing and have words if they agree it's illegal.

PinkLipgloss

OP - did you follow MothballsWallet's advice?

If so, how did you get on?

dodger1

As far as parking adjacent to a dropped kerb is concerned, my ex had this problem. A van was parked across her dropped kerb so she phoned the police, they promptly arrived and had the offending vehicle towed away. It cost the owner a small fortune to get the vehicle back, job done.