Neighbours creating illegal driveways

TELLIT01

Section62 said:

fezster said:

Driving over a pavement without a dropped kerb is an offence...

Often said (including by some highway authorities), but only true in a very small minority of cases.

Before complaining to anyone the OP needs to do is to work out what kind of road this is. That will determine who to complain to, and what laws (if any) might have been broken.

If they simply complaint to the council, the council will soon let them know if it isn't their responsibility.  The vast majority of roads do fall under council control

Section62

TELLIT01 said:

The vast majority of roads do fall under council control

True.  But as the root of the OP's issue isn't really about people parking in the front gardens, but instead the impact of loss of kerbside parking space, it would be tactically unwise for the OP to complain to the highway authority first.

If this is an estate road, and the public realm is the responsibility of the housing department, then the issues are solely about tenant misuse of land, which the housing department is likely to be far more proactive in stopping if they get to hear of it first.

Because in this case stopping the parking appears to be more important than the 'legalisation' of the footway crossings.

MrCheeseman

Does the dropped kerb rule apply to unadopted roads? There are four street-facing garages on my unadopted road, mine included, and only one has a dropped kerb. 

Petriix

Seems like an odd complaint: if they're parking off the road then they can't possibly be reducing the availability of on street parking; their cars would otherwise be parked on the road and thus taking up the space regardless.

So why bother causing a dispute when you have nothing to gain but to inconvenience your neighbours? 

Section62

Petriix said:

Seems like an odd complaint: if they're parking off the road then they can't possibly be reducing the availability of on street parking; their cars would otherwise be parked on the road and thus taking up the space regardless.

So why bother causing a dispute when you have nothing to gain but to inconvenience your neighbours? 

It depends how many cars are parked on each front garden.

The length of kerbspace needed for a crossover is greater than the length needed for 1 car to parallel park on the road, so the total available parking is reduced.

If the garden is used to park two cars, but only using a single crossover, then the total parking is increased - but what often happens with unofficial conversions is the residents expect the kerbspace for the whole width of their garden (plus a bit) to be kept clear to avoid them having any inconvenience when getting in or out, so again there is a net loss of parking space.

The optimum is having two (or more) off-street spaces served by a crossover which is the bare minimum width, and with the crossovers spaced along the street in a way which maximises the remaining space.

The highway authority are only interested in regularisation of crossovers, if someone is bumping over the kerb then the HA will want them to have a proper crossover, but generally don't care too much about where it is positioned.

The housing department have a financial interest in the properties they still own, and will seek to reduce neighbour conflict and disputes. So the housing department could probably be nudged into coordinating a parking scheme where the positions and extent of all crossovers can be designed to optimise the parking. Hence the importance of finding out who is responsible for the road, and then taking a tactical approach when complaining.

lesalanos

Petriix said:

Seems like an odd complaint: if they're parking off the road then they can't possibly be reducing the availability of on street parking; their cars would otherwise be parked on the road and thus taking up the space regardless.

So why bother causing a dispute when you have nothing to gain but to inconvenience your neighbours? 

No cars parked off road means anyone, including OP can park on the road.  How it is now stops anybody parking in the space