Can people park over your driveway?

JustAnotherSaver

Just bought the house & we're not in it properly yet, but we have been coming & going quite a bit & parking in the drive. Next door has popped in to say hello.

Anyway, tonight the wife goes to the house & ends up struggling to get in to the drive ... because a car has parked with its nose partially blocking access to our drive.

Next door park on the pavement, partially in front of their drive, partially accross the divide & partially in front of our wall/drive. Accross the road parks on the road also, opposite our neighbour - this results in it being a bit tight fitting between the two.

It also means that it's a bit tight for the wife coming in to our drive on an angle tonight because of this third car in the picture that is nose accross our drive.

I suppose out on the pavement it's a legal free for all, but what about if they're blocking access to your own drive? Do you have any legal rights, or so long as they're on the pavement it's tough as you don't own the pavement?

pcgtron

Do you have a dropped curb?

custardy

You have no rights of access to your drive,however I believe you have right of exit from your drive
doesn't mean it has to be easy though
I deal with the same at ours

G_M

It is illegal to park on or partially on the pavement.

It is illegal to park across, or partially across, a dropped curb.

jamie11

A neat little notice saying 'Please don't block drive' might work wonders, The 'please' is really important.

jamie11

G_M wrote: »

It is illegal to park on or partially on the pavement.

.

Except where local byelaws allow it. E.g In Hounslow.

Palookaville

Hmmm. Not in my instance. I'm currently in a rented property that has a dropped curb, half the drive has a double yellows and the other half has white zigzags from the pedestrian crossing and despite the kind notice asking people not to park they still do it.
I can understand the frustration with this sort of thing, so much so I'm now in the process of buying a house with a large driveway in a very quiet street!!

makeyourdaddyproud

I have this problem, I would like to tow offenders away without notice.

JustAnotherSaver

pcgtron wrote: »

Do you have a dropped curb?

Yes. The drop allows us to get 1 car in really.

Down the line (once we sort the interior of the house) we'll be looking to knock down our front garden wall, pave the unpaved section & apply to drop the curb further along the road to allow us to get a 2nd car in on our driveway & not have it parked on the pavement.

custardy wrote: »

You have no rights of access to your drive,however I believe you have right of exit from your drive
doesn't mean it has to be easy though
I deal with the same at ours

There's so many thoughtful people in the world.

G_M wrote: »

It is illegal to park on or partially on the pavement.

It is illegal to park across, or partially across, a dropped curb.

There's people on the pavement up & down the cul-de-sac on our street & all around the city too. Nobody seems to get told about it. I'm not saying you're wrong, just saying that it happens so much i guess people (authorities) turn a blind eye to it if that's the case.

jamie11 wrote: »

A neat little notice saying 'Please don't block drive' might work wonders, The 'please' is really important.

Once we move in if it happens again then that'll happen. I was just wondering in advance.

jamie11

This has brought back a memory for me.

I owned a garage, I used to go to work in a wrecker (Towing vehicle) I would sometimes find that a commuter had parked his car across my MOT parking bays. My answer was to gently push the offending vehicle onto the yellow lines a little further down, I didn't damage them. After a few parking tickets they got the idea. Wrong to do? Yes! Satisfying to me? Yes!

chris_m

jamie11 wrote: »

This has brought back a memory for me.

Hehe, I remember something similar.
Back in the 1980s I was a volunteer at a steam railway and had a week off work which I spent up there. Since the week off was at short notice I'd agreed to call into work to pick up my wages rather then them muck about with advance payments etc. Anyway, coinciding with payday we had a large delivery due at the railway (70-odd tons of locomotive on a low-loader) so we had to close off most of the car park. Since I was onsite overnight I landed that job, so early that morning I went down to the local police to collect the cones we'd arranged to borrow and set them out, before heading off to pick up my wages. Yep, you guessed it, in the half-hour I was gone some numpty had shifted the cones and parked - right in the area that the transporter would need to swing around.

Amazingly, for an '80s Ford, not one of about 20 peoples' car keys would fit so off we went down to the police to see if they had any suitable keys - to be told that their spares were with one of the officers at the other end of the patch (a rural patch, so quite a long way away) and asked if the car was really a problem.

When we told them that we had 90-feet and the best part of 100 tons of transporter arriving any minute to block the High Street and, therefore, the entire A31 for as long as it took for this car to be shifted the response was "Oh well then, provided there's no damage you'd better move it then."

Four of us went to the car, bouncy, bouncy, bouncy and it was 30 yards away from where it had been left. In came the transporter and all was well. The car disappeared sometime during the unloading operation but none of us saw it go. We reckon the owner realised what a plonker he'd been and beat a hasty retreat rather than complaining :rotfl: