A DAD was furious after finding drivers constantly parked on his driveway – but came up with a clever way of keeping his space free.
It can be frustrating to find someone parked on your driveway, but unfortunately, there’s not a lot the authorities can do about it.
That’s because it’s not illegal for someone to do this – because they’ve parked on private land, it becomes a civil issue, and not a criminal one.
One dad was furious when he found out the police couldn’t help him when he found cars kept parking in his driveway.
But he found a nifty way to keep them off his property, according to a post on Reddit by a user claiming to be his child.
The Reddit user, posting under the handle lumbridge6, said their dad put a sign up saying drivers had to pay a tenner for parking or risk seeing a £70 “fine”.
He bought a letterbox for drivers to post an envelope containing the cash and their registration number into.
The dad would then log the registrations of all the cars parked in his driveway to see if anyone hadn’t paid up.
He is now planning to go to court “recouping unpaid fines” worth £210 from the cars who failed to cough up.
However, it’s important to note that this is not the way to go about resolving parking disputes like this.
The British Parking Association said to The Sun that only local authorities and official private parking operators can issue fines.
That means you could get into trouble claiming that you’ll fine drivers for parking on your property.
If you want to rent out your driveway without getting into trouble, there are apps that can help you do this, such as Your Parking Space or Just Park.
You can sign up and advertise your driveway as a parking space – and get a fee from drivers in return.
According to the RAC, a loophole in the law means that blocking someone’s driveway isn’t illegal.
There is no criminal law against someone parking on your driveway without asking permission.
Under the Road Traffic Act 1991, local authorities are responsibly for issuing penalty charge notices for parking offences on the road.
But if a car is parked on a driveway, it is on private property and the council has no authority to remove it.
The RAC says homeowners should not be tempted to take the law into their own hands, but try to speak to the owner of the car calmly.
The police advise against hiring a tow truck or clamping the vehicle, as this could be a criminal offence.
Do not attempt to push the vehicle back onto the road – you could get into trouble for this.
However, if someone parks on your property, it is classed as trespassing – if you pursue a civil case for this and take them to the courts, you could get a ruling in your favour to get the car removed from the driveway.
You could also pursue a legal claim for nuisance behaviour.
However, both of these options involve going through the courts so could be costly.
Here is how you can report illegal parking.
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