Neighbour using residential road for car parking

Car_54

TooManyPoints said:

There's nothing to say he has to have the business registered to his home address and if it's as sketchy as it sounds it would be advisable for him not to. 

Of course it depends on what is actually happening in the OP's road, but registering a business (if indeed it is registered at all) elsewhere will not circumvent the planning regulations.

Indeed, the council should be considering what is actually happening on the premises.Where the business is registered is neither here nor there.

I've worked in many office premises with hundreds of others, but the registered office has been many miles away.

[Deleted User]

Place bird food around the cars in question. Customers will not be happy to find that their vehicles with expensive paint jobs are covered in bird muck.

Goudy

[Deleted User] said:

Place bird food around the cars in question. Customers will not be happy to find that their vehicles with expensive paint jobs are covered in bird muck.

I like this but it's worth considering that iffy businesses with iffy business practises are usually operated by iffy people.

Gavin83

TooManyPoints said:

There's nothing to say he has to have the business registered to his home address and if it's as sketchy as it sounds it would be advisable for him not to. 

But it's what he's actually doing from the address in question that the council may be interested in, not what arrangements he has for the registration of a business. If he is resident at the address and it can be shown that he is using the address to operate a business, planning regulations may be applicable.

My local authority faced a very similar problem when the owner of a children's nursery business, which had properly registered premises elsewhere, decided to expand into the house of one of its employees. It was declared as an "annexe" to the main property and it was maintained that because the business was registered elsewhere, no planning rules were being broken. The council issued an enforcement notice and the nursery applied for retrospective planning permission. This was denied and an appeal to the Planning Inspectorate failed.

Of course it depends on what is actually happening in the OP's road, but registering a business (if indeed it is registered at all) elsewhere will not circumvent the planning regulations.

I freely admit it's not an area I know much about so I do have a question around this. If you need planning regulations does that apply to the entire country or just the area surrounding the office? 

This is a fairly unique business. Something like the nursery you mentioned is different. With the nursery they need a physical base to operate from and for customers to arrive at. It's difficult to argue that isn't a business based at that location. With this parking "business" this isn't the case. It's convenient the cars are parked near his house but there's certainly no requirement to be. He can park the cars where he likes. He can operate the business from wherever he likes. There's essentially no link between where the business operates from and where the business is actually carried out. So if he was to register the business to his home address if there anything stopping him from parking the cars in the next town across? Could he run the business from somewhere else, say his house is for residential use only (which may well be true at that point) and continue to park the cars in this street?

I suspect, as you hinted to that this business isn't actually registered at all.

[Deleted User] said:

Place bird food around the cars in question. Customers will not be happy to find that their vehicles with expensive paint jobs are covered in bird muck.

I take the point but it's worth remembering that the car owners are likely completely innocent. They likely aren't aware of the situation and I'm not sure damaging their cars is exactly fair.

Also, as mentioned they are free to park there anyway. The residents don't own the road.