Parking obstruction

gletley

Bit of a mouthful this one, but please bear with me.

We own a bungalow on a private road and each owner of the properties in the road, are responsible for the maintenance of the half of the road in front of their property. With me so far?

The road is in a close and obviously all vehicles have right of access to and from the close using the road.
The majority of the residence are elderly and it comes as no surprise to see the odd ambulance arrive, so people have always been considerate of parking and parked on the front of their properties as well as their drives if they have more than one car.

Recently one of the bungalows has been rented to a young couple who has two cars, one parked on the drive and at the beginning one on the front of the property. Due to the weather, the landlord has told the tenant she is not allowed to park on the front due to messing up the grass, so she has taken to parking opposite our drive, which would not be a problem, but the road is very narrow and when she parks opposite our drive, we can't get off. If we park on our front, or we have any visitors who park on our front, other vehicles cannot exit or have access to the road, because the other car is preventing it.

I have asked her not to park there, but she says she intends to carry on doing so, there is alternative parking on the road entering the close. She today also informed me that if we need to exit our drive, or have visitors who wish to park on our front, we only have to bang on her door and if she is there she will move the car!

As we own half of the road, do we have the right to say who can park there, my neighbour opposite said we can, but bless her, she is in her 80s and has a serious heart problem and this problem is upsetting her as the owner of the car is parking outside my neighbours property.

If we do have the right, how can we enforce it, as she is being ignorant about parking already, we don't know if she would take any notice. I am dealing with Cancer and all sorts of problems from the side effects of drugs, it has often been the case my husband has had to rush me to hospital because an ambulance would have taken too long, which is now worrying me to death because he may not be able to get off our drive.

Any help or advice would be appreciated, the stress of this is not helping me and I have informed the girl about my condition, which is a laugh as she informed me she is a paramedic, which I doubt.

Mistral001

There is probably an easement for traffic over the road in front of your bungalow and if there is then you cannot stop people from driving over it.

Shaun_of_the_Dead

So she's not parking on a piece of road you own?

AdrianC

If she's genuinely causing an obstruction and preventing you leaving, rather than merely "I'd rather she didn't", then that's an offence - even on a private road so long as it's a vehicular RoW.

Let's see a photo...

gletley

Shaun_of_the_Dead wrote: »

So she's not parking on a piece of road you own?

Yes we do own the piece of the road, but traffic is allowed to use it for access.

gletley

AdrianC wrote: »

If she's genuinely causing an obstruction and preventing you leaving, rather than merely "I'd rather she didn't", then that's an offence - even on a private road so long as it's a vehicular RoW.

Let's see a photo...

I've just been told that one of my neighbours has also had a go at her because she parked in the road opposite my neighbours car and blocked the road. My neighbour has to park on her front.

Yes she is obstructing us getting off the drive, the road is wide enough for one car to drive up and down, not for passing cars as on a main road.

gletley

Mistral001 wrote: »

There is probably an easement for traffic over the road in front of your bungalow and if there is then you cannot stop people from driving over it.

Asked about that. The piece that we can park on is registered as part of our property, but we or visitors can't park there, because her car would prevent access for other vehicles. We and our neighbours have never had any problems with traffic using the road, it's just this one person parking on the road now.

PasturesNew

If you own the road you can prove it.
Having to pay maintenance for the road isn't ownership.
Check the deeds, see what's inside your red line.

If you own the road and have the deeds in your hand, shove a copy up her nostril and say "look, deeds, I own this bit and so you do not have the owner's permission to park there as I'm not giving it to you".

She'll pick on somebody else's bit then..... and then it's their problem, not yours.

gletley

PasturesNew wrote: »

If you own the road you can prove it.
Having to pay maintenance for the road isn't ownership.
Check the deeds, see what's inside your red line.

If you own the road and have the deeds in your hand, shove a copy up her nostril and say "look, deeds, I own this bit and so you do not have the owner's permission to park there as I'm not giving it to you".

She'll pick on somebody else's bit then..... and then it's their problem, not yours.

Just checked our deeds and the red line includes the half of the road in front of our bungalow and the reading states we own the road, although only a little bit because it's so narrow.
But how do we enforce it, according to Canterbury City Council, even though we and our neighbour opposite own the road, we would have to start legal proceedings which would be costly. We were also told we could only phone the police to get her to move the car if it was an emergency and she was preventing us exiting the drive.

born_again

Simple answer is to do as she asked.
Go bang on her door go out. Come back 5 mins later and again knock her up :rotfl: to get back on drive. Rinse and repeat till she gets fed up with moving her car.

Could try landlord and explain the situation, see if they can put some pressure on them.

gletley

born_again wrote: »

Simple answer is to do as she asked.
Go bang on her door go out. Come back 5 mins later and again knock her up :rotfl: to get back on drive. Rinse and repeat till she gets fed up with moving her car.

Could try landlord and explain the situation, see if they can put some pressure on them.

If she goes out without the car, she can't move it, as she pointed out, 'if I'm in I'll move it'

We know the landlord, he lives up the road and knows what's going on, he just told her to park where she wants, but as he lives at the top of the close in a big round area, he is not fussed about the problems she is causing, he just said she could not park on the front because it's messing the grass up.
Of course there is the chance that she will just ignore us banging on the door and not answer it.