Car blocking access

[Sue]

Does anybody own or know who does a grey VW Golf reg CA20 JYO parked in Ulverscroft Road?

I have been saving three car spaces needed for access today by Geobear to do resin injection under my bay.

Somebody has moved a bin which was clearly marked with the reason why it was in the road, and Geobear cannot park.

I have posted on our road's WhatsApp group but I'm pretty sure it doesn't belong to anybody in the street.

ETA: I have been waiting over a year for this further remedial work to be done 😭😭😭

[DuncanW]

Hi Sue,

That's annoying. As you know on Fridays people park in Ulverscroft for the Mosque on NCR - have you tried contacting them yet?

[fairyed]

The midday prayer is not till just after 1 at the moment so if this happened earlier I don?t think it would be them. Frustratingly a similar thing happened to us when we were expecting work done, turns out it was a morning commuter (who drove over from wherever, parked and cycled into the city) who arguably and understandably didn?t take well with my frustrations at the end of the day when I still had to pay a fee for taking up a days work when no work could be done.

Maybe place a polite note on their windshield if all efforts are wasted. These things are frustrating especially when you?re not hogging a parking space for personal ease but I do hope you can find the owner soon!

[Sue]

Thanks it was some time before the mosque I think

[jazzer]

Bump it out of the way

[Sue]

They aren't allowed to do that.

[jimlad48]

Sorry, I'm not going to sound sympathetic here. If you want guaranteed access, then pay to suspend the parking bay for a fixed period. If not, then you have no right to ad hoc reserve a space, nor do you have the right to deny other people spaces. They were perfectly entitled to park there if it was a legal parking space.

While frustrating, if its not suspended, they are entirely within their rights to park there whether its convenient or not to you.

[Sue]

I know that. It is up to the insurance company to sort that out, not me!

[Abe_froeman]

You can't pay to suspend because there are no parking bays.

The council are no help at all for situations like this (and many other situations not like this too of course :)).

[fairyed]

jimlad, whilst what you say may be true, sometimes it doesn't come down to having a right or feeling entitled but it comes down to being polite and understanding. If the poster has put a note explaining the situation it does seem like the polite thing to do to just drive down the street or round the block and park elsewhere. The driver could also drive away with a few choice words to let their disappointment out, but it's okay because in the end of the day, they'll find parking somewhere locally.

I can assure you, planned work not being carried out after waiting such a long time is more of an inconvenience for the poster than the person who moved the bin and parked.

[jimlad48]

It may be annoying, but you have no legal right to block the spaces. Sorry, I get the frustrations, but ultimately the parker is in the right, not the OP.

[tomskip]

That's a very un-neighbourly way of looking at it jimlad48. It's not like Sue is reserving spaces with cones every day just because she feels like parking outside her own house.

Sometimes people with free parking outside their property need works done on the house, or to move in or out. It's just life and is one of those occasions when the "rules" don't fit.

[jimlad48]

I'm not being unneighbourly, I'm being pragmatic. There has been a big growth in many areas with 'bin staking', particularly by builders, or in some cases residents reserving what they perceive to be their space for parking during the day.

These arrangements are not legal, and the car owner is entirely within their rights to see a pegged out area, and move them so that they can park.

I absolutely understand that its frustrating, and I also get that its causing a lot of problems, but I must stress that legally the car owner has done nothing wrong, even if morally they are on more dubious ground.

[DuncanW]

You're right in as much as the driver of the Golf was within their legal rights to move the bin and park their car there. But we are in a sorry state if that really is the only yardstick by which we measure our behaviour.

Sue, I hope that matter was resolved and the work was undertaken.

[Sue]

Unfortunately no it wasn't sorted. The car driver didn't return and Geobear eventually had to leave - with their massive van parked round the corner - because we couldn't get sufficient space near enough to my house. They waited until the very last minute but then they couldn't have got the job done in time even had the car owner come back.

A space became available on the other side of my car which we saved with a bin hoping that the car the other side of that might move, but that caused my neighbour to shout and swear at me when he returned and couldn't park, though I was trying to explain why the bin was there.

My other lovely neighbours have now saved spaces the other side with cones and a pallet.

Re people saving space outside their house, for some weeks I have been doing that when I've driven to my allotment, purely because I knew Geobear were coming in the near future but I didn't know exactly when.

Unfortunately the original day they were due a month or so back was when Thames Water were doing emergency work outside my house due to a burst sewer which flooded mine and my neighbours' cellars and filled the area in front of my bay with sewage 😭

ETA:Geobear had a smaller van which they have parked behind my car the other side in the hope that one way or another we can find enough space.

Extremely luckily and unexpectedly, they are coming back on Monday, so it's fingers crossed all round now.

In a bid for sympathy, I will add that this insurance claim was first made in July 2018, following which there have been innumerable errors and delays.

The job should have taken six weeks. At one point I had to live in my kitchen for five months or else go to bed. I was ill at the time 😭

And then after it was supposedly finished, the cracking reappeared in the same places.

As you might imagine, I have been extremely stressed.

[Blah Blah]

Tough one this. Car owner technically within his or her rights, but how is anyone ever going to get any emergency work done if people can't on occasion sort parking space for specialist vehicles?

Have you considered hiring a few of these barriers Sue?

https://www.hss.com/hire/p/pedestrian-barrier

Cheap enough to hire and far harder for a driver to move in order to park. Look more official too ;)

You shouldn't have to go to that length of course, but it might be a solution.

[Sue]

If the situation is the same on Monday then yes Geobear will have to do that.

I have no idea why they don't already, but they work all over the place so it probably isn't feasible for them to save a space in advance themselves.

[George Orwell]

No help in this case of course but . . . . In advance of filming on location I've seen people putting out cones and keeping one man on the site, usually in some sort of fake official yellow jacket, staying in his car for maybe 24 hours - even overnight. He jumps out and moves cars along as needed.

[alice]

You have my understanding. Also had front bay rebuilt spending Christmas in a very dark room.

[jimlad48]

George Orwell Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> No help in this case of course but . . . . In

> advance of filming on location I've seen people

> putting out cones and keeping one man on the site,

> usually in some sort of fake official yellow

> jacket, staying in his car for maybe 24 hours -

> even overnight. He jumps out and moves cars along

> as needed.

If I observed that, I would not only park there for a day or two but would also report them to the council - totally appalling behaviour and probably illegal.

[Sue]

Hooray! They have parked!

Thanks everybody.

ETA: All completed now, thank goodness!