Parking Permit on a leasehold residential development

xyzperson

I live in a block of flats where the Management Committee wants to initiate a permit system with Care Parking. The car parking spaces are demised to the flat owners. I don’t like it and would like to stop it. Any advice please?

The_Deep

Get together with other residents, (Residents' Association) and decide what the majority want. If they are in favour you may, depending on the terms of your lease, be able to opt out. If they are against put your concerns to the MA.

There is masses of stuff here about the problems residents have with these PPCs. Google "Parking fine in my own space" and "Care Parking" for further reading, but bear in mind changes to the law w.e.f. 1st October 2012.

bazster

Exactly. If this does happen check your lease carefully, and if there is nothing in there that provides for them imposing a permit scheme on you put it in writing to the management company that you do not accept the terms of the scheme and will not display a permit.

And start educating your fellow residents about how these schemes aren't about solving parking problems, they are about chiselling money from legitimate residents on flimsy pretexts.

Guys_Dad

bazster wrote: »

Exactly. If this does happen check your lease carefully, and if there is nothing in there that provides for them imposing a permit scheme on you put it in writing to the management company that you do not accept the terms of the scheme and will not display a permit.

This isn't quite accurate, although it is along the right lines.

Some leases have a section that empowers the management company to take what measures it deems fit for the efficient and safe management of the properties.

You need to check exactly what the lease says about the powers of the management company. The lease does NOT have to spell out in detail every single power of the management company if it is written in a manner that gives them sweeping powers. So there may not be specific wording about parking permits and PPCs.

That does not prevent you from following the advice in the quote but it doesn't mean that you will automatically be successful.

Stroma

If the lease doesn't mention it, tell the management company you are opting out, inform them that no permits will be displayed to park in your own parking space, that is of course providing there's allocated parking.

bazster

Just because a lease might try to give the management company carte blanche to do anything they like it doesn't mean it can be taken literally and that anything they do is legitimate and enforceable. There's got to be a test of reasonableness even if it doesn't expressly say so in the lease, and if someone tried to do it to me (not very likely since I don't live in a flat!) I would strongly argue that their powers do not extend to telling me what I must do on my own parking space and with my own car.

Even a covenant isn't enforceable if it tries to make you do something as opposed to preventing you from doing something. Just because something's written on paper doesn't make it enforceable, and if the OP hasn't expressly agreed to displaying a permit if requested to do so I'd suggest he should fight any attempt to make him do so.

The_Deep

Indeed, but what is reasonable?

IMO it is reasonable to require residents to comply with certain parking regulations, i.e. tax or sorn their cars, insure them, park within certain parameters, etc. It is not reasonable to pester them for large sums of money if they do not comply. It is not reasonable to threaten them with court if they do not pay.

In one of my flats, now owned by my son, it is included in the schedule that motorcycles must be parked in the garages. I refused to do so on the basis that I did not own a motorcycle.

Also in the same lease was a prohibition on playing radios and TV receivers after 11pm. I wrote to the landlord many years ago that this infringed my rights under the European Convention. They never replied and my son often watches TV with the sound on after 11pm.

So, because it is in the lease does not make it reasonable.

Guys_Dad

I agree with the above and Bazster about tests of reasonableness and strong arguments. I am simply saying that to get a resolution, it might take a visit to court and the opinion of a judge, with the OP having the points you make as their case and the potential lease or contract powers of the management company on the other.

By simply saying "I opt out" - even 3 times - is not the parking equivalent of the Islamic divorce.