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Re: Can I have a moan?

Posted: 1 Sep 2014, 5:56pm
by kwackers
BigFoz wrote:In the case of the car dumped on a driveway, what would happen if you decided you no longer wanted a driveway and bricked it off from the road before said tool returned from holiday?

Who knows...
What about bikes chained to railings, suppose you uprooted the railing and threw it in a skip? Same principle I'd have thought...

I tried to find the article, sure it was on the Beeb website.

Re: Can I have a moan?

Posted: 1 Sep 2014, 6:15pm
by ambodach
In the old days even before my time hikers on the Kilpatrick Hills near Glasgow allegedly had a good ploy. They walked on until they saw a keeper and immediately turned and walked slowly in the opposite direction. Keeper caught up with them and demanded that they return whence they came. So after a bit of argument they turned round and walked in the direction they had been going in the first place. I doubt anyone was fooled but honour was satisfied and the keeper was able to say to his employer that he had sent them back wher they came from.

Re: Can I have a moan?

Posted: 1 Sep 2014, 6:48pm
by mjr
kwackers wrote:
BigFoz wrote:In the case of the car dumped on a driveway, what would happen if you decided you no longer wanted a driveway and bricked it off from the road before said tool returned from holiday?

[...] I tried to find the article, sure it was on the Beeb website.

I feel dirty linking this but it's the only source I found, so take it with a bucket of salt. Are you sure it was on the Beeb and you didn't spot it while looking at their famous pornish sidebar? ;-)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1260662/Young-family-left-fuming-motorist-leaves-car-driveway-jetting-holiday-nearby-Stansted.html wrote:A young family has been left fuming after a motorist left a car in their driveway before jetting off on holiday from nearby Stansted Airport. [...] The owner of the vehicle is believed to have left it there and walked to Stansted to catch a flight, but police and council officials have told the family they are powerless to move it because technically it is not breaking the law.

Plenty of similar cases on other forums, though.

Re: Can I have a moan?

Posted: 1 Sep 2014, 6:55pm
by thirdcrank
The "Oh, yes they can!" bit is enshrined in the rather bizarrely named Protection of Freedoms Act 2012

s 54 prohibits clamping and the like, as originally promised by Bliar. s 56 empowers the recovery of parking charges. Schedule 4, sets up a legal framework for the recovery of those parking charges. I've not looked for loopholes but I suspect it's in duck's orifice territory in terms of impermeability. It was framed after a lot of lobbying from a powerful lobby. (Clue: the govt which is hell bent on liberalising the yellow line enforcement of street parking to gain a bit of popularity from the motoring lobby, was happy to risk alienating motorists to gain the "support" of the hedge funds etc which tend to own the retail car parks. )

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/201 ... /4/enacted

Not much use to the private person who finds a car hogging their driveway, because they'd be unlikely to have got the notices etc in place in anticipation and if they did anticipate it, the easiest thing would be to prevent it with some sort of obstruction. The owner of a shop near here who seems to be plagued with people parking on their small car park while visiting the neighbouring pub and who then leave the cars overnight deploys a line of kerbstones each evening and shifts them the following morning.

Re: Can I have a moan?

Posted: 1 Sep 2014, 7:18pm
by kwackers
mjr wrote:I feel dirty linking this but it's the only source I found, so take it with a bucket of salt. Are you sure it was on the Beeb and you didn't spot it while looking at their famous pornish sidebar? ;-)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1260662/Young-family-left-fuming-motorist-leaves-car-driveway-jetting-holiday-nearby-Stansted.html wrote:A young family has been left fuming after a motorist left a car in their driveway before jetting off on holiday from nearby Stansted Airport. [...] The owner of the vehicle is believed to have left it there and walked to Stansted to catch a flight, but police and council officials have told the family they are powerless to move it because technically it is not breaking the law.

Plenty of similar cases on other forums, though.

Could be that one. Bit more interesting than I remembered - council house, therefore council property and not really 'private' property...
Can o' worms there I think!

Re: Can I have a moan?

Posted: 1 Sep 2014, 7:38pm
by Bicycler
Not at all. Council property is owned, albeit by a public body. It is private land in the sense that we use the term.

Re: Can I have a moan?

Posted: 1 Sep 2014, 11:16pm
by MikeF
In reply to the OP. My experience of many fishermen is that the attitude you found is very common.

Re: Can I have a moan?

Posted: 1 Sep 2014, 11:31pm
by MikeF
Bicycler wrote:Not at all. Council property is owned, albeit by a public body. It is private land in the sense that we use the term.

Precisely! Many people wrongly assume that Council owned land (or property) is "public" land and therefore free access is automatically granted. The land or property is private, but owned by a public body.

Re: Can I have a moan?

Posted: 2 Sep 2014, 12:04am
by beardy
Though I believe that you are not going to be allowed to SORN a vehicle if it is kept off the road on a council property any more, so it has a private/public property duality.

Re: Can I have a moan?

Posted: 2 Sep 2014, 12:11am
by Postboxer
Would carefully dismantling a car count as damage? Either that or just making it known on local forums how much you'd hate for it to be vandalised and how you wouldn't dare look out of your house if you heard a car being smashed up on your driveway.

Re: Can I have a moan?

Posted: 2 Sep 2014, 10:26am
by thirdcrank
I suspect that if somebody parks a car without permission on somebody else's private drive while they go on holiday, then it must be a trespass. Although trespassers cannot be prosecuted (except in specific cases where trespassing has been made an offence) that wouldn't prevent somebody taking civil action. Probably a bit academic in most cases, but not if the occupier of the land suffered a substantial loss. eg If a builder was due to start work and couldn't do so because their access was blocked. If the occupier was unable to park on their own land and in consequence incurred extra expenses themselves (eg presumably no other convenient free car parking nearby or the trespasser would have used it) then those expenses would be recoverable from the trespasser. If the trespasser found it too inconvenient or expensive to park-and-ride at the start and end of their hols, then they would have to recognise that inflicting that on the occupier every day on the duration of their trespass was considerably more inconvenient and expensive.

Resorting to the law like this is expensive and complicated and not everybody is comfortable with it. A civil claim for compo is only cost effective if the other party has the means to pay. Somebody (kwackers?) mentioned that in the case they had seen reported, the police advice had been along the lines that nothing could be done. The fact is that the police get little training on the civil law, other than to understand that civil action is largely a private matter. They are rightly anxious to avoid being quoted as the authority for something being done - or they should be. The only advice can be to get decent legal advice. (Which is why I began this post with "I suspect.")

Re: Can I have a moan?

Posted: 2 Sep 2014, 10:31am
by [XAP]Bob
You know scrap metal men...


Would they take a whole car?

Re: Can I have a moan?

Posted: 2 Sep 2014, 10:33am
by kwackers
[XAP]Bob wrote:You know scrap metal men...


Would they take a whole car?

I know a guy would drop me a skip off, foc for as long as I needed it. Could take years to fill with grass cuttings!

Re: Can I have a moan?

Posted: 2 Sep 2014, 11:10am
by Ben@Forest
Recognising that many of the posts here are along the lines of 'landowners impinging upon the rights of freeborn Englishmen (or whatever part of the UK you come from) - what do they think they are doing?' there are problems from the other side of the gate - so to speak. Among these are flytipping, travellers gaining entry, theft, game birds being reared, ground nesting birds nesting and the amount of litter left behind by the general public.

As a land manager I have had problems with all the above and the first two in particular can be expensive and time-consuming - I have had to deal with loads of asbestos being dumped and travellers who left more than two lorry loads of rubbish (mainly conifer clippings). I recognise that's not always the reason gates are locked but it does happen. Not everyone out there is a cheery cyclist or happy hiker who would cause no problems.

Re: Can I have a moan?

Posted: 2 Sep 2014, 5:39pm
by mjr
But it's not like locking the gates has stopped flytipping and so on, is it? The bad people are still doing it, while there are no good people to witness it and maybe intervene. I really don't see the logic in stopping everyone except the lawbreakers entering.