Converting allocated parking to a garden.

user1977

RAS said:

Have you downloaded the deeds and checked any covenants etc? If they cover parking, you'd only need one neighbour to complain or another to check whether they can do the same thing and the council could start enforcement action.

Covenants aren't anything to do with the council (unless they happen to be one of the landowners involved).

RAS

Thanks, Must have been a planning restriction, but that also applies to the OP#s situation.

Section62

user1977 said:

RAS said:

Have you downloaded the deeds and checked any covenants etc? If they cover parking, you'd only need one neighbour to complain or another to check whether they can do the same thing and the council could start enforcement action.

Covenants aren't anything to do with the council (unless they happen to be one of the landowners involved).

They could be named as a beneficiary though?

But any enforcement action is more likely to be associated with planning matters.

Misthios

RAS said:

Have you downloaded the deeds and checked any covenants etc? If they cover parking, you'd only need one neighbour to complain or another to check whether they can do the same thing and the council could start enforcement action. It doesn't matter if you've only got one car and there is on-street parking at the front. They'd be looking at the impact of visitors parking on-street rather than in allocated parking, on a wider scale.

There was a recent thread here where the widow owning a house refused to replace a boundary wall with one meeting the planning requirements/covenants despite her husband having already been fined. It took the potential purchaser a lot of work (and advice) to find a way forward that allowed him to buy the place without being fined as well. Despite the fact that he wanted to alter the offending wall to meet the covenant it almost scuppered the deal.

woowww. Unbelievable, thank you for letting me know. 

Misthios

Just want to thank everyone for replying to my post. Your answers helped me a lot and learned a lot of things that I was not aware of. and I need to think twice before I buy this property because in the end there's no much room for space, many restrictions and no much room for development in order to increase the quality and add value. Basically they say, take this property but you won't be able to make changes or challenge the status quo and I am not referring to the parking space only. In that area, that building although its not a listed or period property, you can't even change the interior or the exterior of the property. Unbelievable for me but true.. This also explains why the rest of the terraced houses there look copied / pasted all the same. Even the doors and lights are all the same. Lesson learned. 

Bendy_House

There are two obvious reasons why putting up a fence/landscaping half the parking space might cheese folk off - one is the loss of a parking space, so if you have visitors parking on that roadway instead (look at your first photo - no-one else is on the road), that is pretty much guaranteed to annoy.

The other is a change to the 'streetview'. Again, if you look at that first photo, it all looks quite 'open'. Now imagine all the houses in that photo have fences around their fronts, covering half their parking slots - it will look and 'feel' quite different, I think. More hemmed-in. More insular. Less friendly.

I doubt you'll get a positive answer if you enquire about this beforehand, and there's probably a waaaay-less-than-half chance that you would 'get away' with it after you move in, so I wouldn't personally proceed if it's that important to you.

After you move in, and get to chat with the neighbs, if you then explain that you only have one car, and rarely any others turning up, and you wish to landscape half that area whilst keeping it open and low-fenced, and always ready for reconverting back to a parking slot, then they may say "That sounds cool..." and be prepared to not complain.

But I think you should buy only expecting - and being prepared to accept - the worst

I do like the earlier ideas, tho', of landscaping it in a way that it can still be parked over when needed. Coupled with some nice planting in easy-to-move pots (a contra in terms?), that could be acceptable? 'Could'. Even some lightweight screening - a couple of posts with this slung between them, which can be dropped in a few seconds to still allow parking on the second half?

But don't act without a neighbourly chat :-)

liberty_lily

Misthios said:

Basically they say, take this property but you won't be able to make changes or challenge the status quo and I am not referring to the parking space only. In that area, that building although its not a listed or period property, you can't even change the interior or the exterior of the property. Unbelievable for me but true.. This also explains why the rest of the terraced houses there look copied / pasted all the same. Even the doors and lights are all the same. Lesson learned. 

See my bit in bold....this wouldn't be a leasehold property, would it?

user1977

Misthios said:

In that area, that building although its not a listed or period property, you can't even change the interior or the exterior of the property. Unbelievable for me but true.. This also explains why the rest of the terraced houses there look copied / pasted all the same. Even the doors and lights are all the same. 

Surely the reason they're all the same is because they're very modern and the builders would have fitted them out identically? I doubt very much there are conditions prohibiting you from making any changes to the interior or exterior, are you sure you haven't misinterpreted something?

Alderbank

Misthios said:

In that area, that building although its not a listed or period property, you can't even change the interior or the exterior of the property. Unbelievable for me but true.. This also explains why the rest of the terraced houses there look copied / pasted all the same. Even the doors and lights are all the same.

Your pictures don't show much of the estate. However I can see that the house for sale has a picket style fence (all verticals), and the house next door has a ranch fence (long horizontals).
Are you sure the houses are 'all the same'?

Misthios

100% sure.