Apartment visitor parking converted to business parking - legal?

SocMinarch

I live in an apartment with designated spaces for visitors. The visitor spaces have now had bollards installed by a local business in the middle of the night. There has been no prior communication about this change so this already strikes me as suspicious.

Assuming these bollards were installed with the permission of the management company, is this even legal given the change of use and lack of communication?

elsien

It’s not a change of use, because it’s still parking. Are you an owner or a tenant and what does the lease say about parking?

propertyrental

Who owns the land involved?

Who has rights to use it eg specified in their own Freehold titles or leases?]

What do the original or latest planning consents say?

SocMinarch

Tenant, and the only mention of parking relates to the private spaces that are assigned to plots.

However, there is a term that states any modifications made to common areas by the landlords must not make them substantially less accessible or convenient. Depends on whether that counts as a common area. Doubt it, although the same parking area is shared with private parking.

Just amazing that the response to there not being enough parking for residents is to reduce the amount of available spaces.

eddddy

SocMinarch said:

I live in an apartment with designated spaces for visitors. 

Do you own the leasehold apartment? Or do you rent it?

If you own it, you should read the lease to see if it says there are visitor spaces.

If you rent it, you should read the AST to see if it says visitor spaces are available.


If your lease/AST says nothing about visitor spaces, you don't really have a basis for complaint. 

But if your lease says there should be visitor spaces, you can start off by complaining to the freeholder's management company.

Or if your AST says there should be visitor spaces, you can complain to your landlord.

SocMinarch

eddddy said:

If you own it, you should read the lease to see if it says there are visitor spaces.

There isn't a specific mention of visitor spaces, however the expenditure to be included in the Service Provision does mention:

• "land adjoining or in the vicinity of the Estate and which provides a benefit to the Leaseholder or the owners tenants or other occupiers in the Building or the Estate"

• "The costs incurred by the Landlord in ... unadopted roads or paths car parking bays and spaces and car parking areas"

Doesn't look like there's any legal grounds for an objection, but at least I could argue a reduced service charge on the basis that we no longer benefit.

I fully expect the management company to be useless as ever anyway. They also want us to pay for parking permits for the spaces that our lease includes. Given that the lease makes no mention of permits, that one I'm fairly sure is illegal.

daveyjp

Check the planning situation.  If the development planning conditions require the visitor spaces they may be in breach

SocMinarch

daveyjp said:

Check the planning situation.  If the development planning conditions require the visitor spaces they may be in breach

Planning documents clearly mention provision for visitor parking. There is also no mention of any physical restrictions to parking. The business is also violating the requirement to display signage as to who the spaces are allocated for (assuming it even belongs to them and they haven't just illegally installed bollards in the middle of the night).

I'll be raising this with the council.

Bookworm105

SocMinarch said:

Just amazing that the response to there not being enough parking for residents is to reduce the amount of available spaces.

resident parking and visitor parking are not the same thing - if they are for visitors then they are not for residents 

user1977

SocMinarch said:

daveyjp said:

Check the planning situation.  If the development planning conditions require the visitor spaces they may be in breach

Planning documents clearly mention provision for visitor parking.

But was it a requirement that they actually provide parking to visitors (or define what "visitors" even means? Are the commercial premises part of the development?).

eddddy

SocMinarch said:

Doesn't look like there's any legal grounds for an objection, but at least I could argue a reduced service charge on the basis that we no longer benefit.

I'm not sure if you're misunderstanding how service charges (usually) work.

They are not a fee that you pay in return for benefits (like the use of parking spaces etc)

A service charge is your share of the bills for insurance, maintenance, repairs, admin, etc.  All the bills are added up to give a grand total, and each leaseholder pays a percentage of that grand total.


However, based on the wording of your lease, you might be able to argue that bills relating to those parking spaces shouldn't be added into the grand total from now onwards.

For example, maybe the cost of installing the bollards should be excluded from the grand total, and the cost of repainting the lines / resurfacing of those parking spaces in the future should be excluded from future grand totals.

So that should filter through to have a (probably small) impact on future service charge bills.