Options for carpark

Counting_Pennies_2

I wonder if you can help.


We own a house that is part of a 1960s terraced block. All houses are freehold. No maintenance agreements or anything are in place.


To the side of the block is a private carpark. It is owned by the developer (who has since gone out of business and no new owners can be traced, so a bank or other liquidator has ownership of the deeds somewhere we assume, we have tried and can't trace) The owners of each house owns either a garage or a parking space (because they didn't pay for the garage to be built), and then there are a handful of visitor spaces for guests of the houses.


Now clearly times have moved on, cars are a plenty, and some houses have more than one car. With no on street parking due to inner city parking restrictions parking is restricted to just the car park and the odd permit parking space in the surrounding roads.


The problem that has arisen is some of the houses are tenanted. This is not an issue in itself, the tenants are generally all great. That is except two. These two separate houses have friends who live in the houses opposite, who don't have any rights to the car park. They however allow their friends to park their cars in there. They seem to be a mixture of private mini cabs, and privately owned cars.

So we have a nightmare scenario that either they take up all the parking spaces permanently, they seem to play games rotating cars. Some don't seem to work, and others drive their taxis at various times of day and night, they spend their time moving one car and instantly putting another one in its place.


You name it they have done it. Blocked access to garages, block access into the car park by parking in rows. Residents have tried asking nicely, but just get abuse thrown at them. They have tried reasoning with the tenants in the same block saying they are appealing to their better nature to try to understand the car park is private and all residents have right of access to the garages and use of visitor spaces.


In the past they have put a padlock on the gate and issued all residents keys to the padlock. Only to have these people crowbar the padlock off.


The car park has signs saying PRIVATE CAR PARK, but it makes no difference.


Clamping is no longer legal.


We really are at a loss at what we can do now.


Today I tried reasoning with the son of one of the tenants in our terrace, and he said he would put it to his father to ask them not to park there, he was very nice, and polite, but the ferocity of the response that comes out of the people who park there is awful.


I honestly fear our car will be keyed or worse.


Any ideas?


Thanks

InsideInsurance

Lived in a place with shared parking previously but it was very close to town and people quickly learned that the gates opened automatically just by driving up to them so we used to get a fair amount of non-residents parking.

The freeholder contacted a ticketing firm and they put up the signs etc and issued parking permits and visitor signs. A number of the residents were given a kit for issuing tickets. The company themselves sent an inspector around a couple of times a week and once or twice they towed vehicles that had run up a few tickets.

I did look online at these types of people when we had problems at the next place and in most cases they seem to self fund via the issued tickets, some shared revenues too. Some do more modern CCTV based ones too but no idea of costs in those cases or practicalities of getting power to a camera.

How effective it is I dont know, it seems to work moderately well with our old place but did have being ticketed issues when I had a garage courtesy car for a few weeks as the permit issuing took a couple of weeks and I didnt want to take up one of the limited visitor spots.

bod1467

All I'll say is - DON'T go down the route of engaging a private parking company. ALL they want is money, and they don't care WHO they get it from. (So if you forgot to show your permit for YOUR car in YOUR space, you might get a ticket. Is that what you want? And anyone who can Google can easily find out that such speculative invoices are worth nothing and can usually be easily defeated).

PS - this thread might be better-served in the Parking sub-forum. PM Crabman to get it moved.

AdrianC

YOU can't do anything. Only the owners of the carpark can. And, if they aren't interested, that's pretty much an end to it.

Obstruction of the garages is another issue, of course, assuming your garage carries a legal right of vehicular access. But enforcing that? Good luck.

As far as figuring out who the owners are, LR will tell you the last known owners. If that's a limited company, check on Companies House. If they're no longer active, then start to search for an official receiver. If that brings no joy (they may have been voluntarily dissolved, rather than gone south), contact the last directors (get their details via Companies House or DueDil)

You may well find that the trail leads back to HMRC, because a very large number of companies are wound up owing substantial money in unpaid tax, and the tax man is a priority creditor.

Crabman

I've moved this over to the Parking sub-board

The_Deep

I own a flat in the town centre. For years we had problems with people parking there and going shopping. This has now be solved by putting a raising bollard in the middle of the only access with a warning sign that the bollard could be raised at any time.

bazster

Counting_Pennies wrote: »

In the past they have put a padlock on the gate and issued all residents keys to the padlock. Only to have these people crowbar the padlock off.

Who is "they"?

Counting_Pennies_2

bazster wrote: »

Who is "they"?

The friends and relatives of the tenants who live opposite and in neighbouring streets. They are fast taking over

Coupon-mad

No, who put the padlock on?


Why don't you have a lockable post?

Counting_Pennies_2

Honestly these people are not to be messed with.


In high numbers they are incredibly intimidating. The developer is no long around to enforce the parking, and the only thing we can really do is have the police out each time our access is blocked.


I think the only thing available to us now is a form of a parking system, but it would need to be self policing, or easy to police, and of course need the agreement of the rest of the residents which is going to be nigh on impossible.


Is there any way of finding out who the landlord is to may be approach?


Thanks

Coupon-mad

Why don't you have a lockable post?