Landowner rights to opt out of Permit Parking Scheme.

[Permitbay]

We no longer wish to be in a permit parking scheme which we agreed to approx 15 years ago. The land the bays were marked on is wholly owned by us and is part of an unadopted road. The bays needed remarking and we disputed that action because the permit zone is hardly ever policed and so parents from the local school park there without penalty. 

 

We gave the council notice that we wanted out of the scheme but they balloted neighbours (some of whom had never been in the scheme in the first place because they were allowed to opt out due to their frontages being private) and the school and three additional houses not actually on the street but with a window looking onto to it and it was voted 10-4 in favour.

 

The ownership of the land is documented at the Land Registry and the council have a copy of that document.

 

We have asked that they redraw the TRO to remove our frontage form the scheme, they have ignored this request and gone ahead with the remarking exercise and also during that process they removed and disposed of four cones from our property (which we owned) without our permission.

 

Against our objections, the council have now remarked bays all across our frontage and an H bar across the frontage of our garage which fronts the road.

 

The council say we cannot unilaterally opt out of the permit scheme and that despite it being our land they do not need our permission to mark out permit parking bays. They have offered no proof of that contention.

 

We are now at the point of engaging a solicitor to fight this on our behalf.

 

Can anyone help with any legal pointers or legal publications we can use to bolster our case?  Happy to answers any queries.

Edited March 20, 2019 by Permitbay

[king12345]

Did you say that this is your land (shared ownership i suppose)?

The council has painted parking bays and started a resident permit scheme 15 years ago, correct?

If this is the case, dig out your deeds and see what easements and passing rights are listed there.

This could be one of the cases that are better dealt with by a specialised solicitor.

Check your house insurance for free legal cover.

[Permitbay]

Thanks for your response.

 

No, not shared ownership each householder owns the land from their garden wall to the centre of the road. 

 

The road is unadopted on this side only, on the odd side the road is adopted, but not the pavement!  

Unless that is what you mean by shared ownership?

We all own our own bit?

 

From the centre line to the other pavement (which is also unadopted) the road is not owned those householders. 

[king12345]

What about the deeds?

Is there something regarding right of pass and repass?

[Permitbay]

I don't know, I will have to search them out, I know we have them somewhere, but not exactly sure where they are! 

 

Does that apply to permit parking issues though? We have no objection to the passage of traffic or road markings or even people parking with consideration, but we simply do not want to be in the council scheme as it is not policed regularly enough for it to be worthwhile bothering to buy 5 permits, especially to park on our own land.

 

I would rather give the money to charity.

[king12345]

If your land has only rights of pass and repass, tell them to jog off.

Unless the deeds say something specific to parking, your land remain yours and you can park there without any permit.

[Permitbay]

I hope so, but the council are adamant they do not need our permission, so we will have to take the legal route I think. 

I will search for the deeds tomorrow and hopefully, they will shed some light onto the issue. Thanks for your input.

[king12345]

The council will always be adamant that they're right, even when they've been to court and lost.

See the deeds and throw the book at them.

If you have legal cover with your home insurance it might be worth letting a solicitor deal with the council. 

Commonly speaking no council can charge you to use your own land to park your car.

[ericsbrother]

If you get as far as engaging a lawyer dont forget to throw in the biased ballot including people who have no interest in the land (doesnt matter thay are near neighbours). Now there may well be an easement for the road to allow all and sundry to pass along it but that wont affect your property as long as that right of way/throughfare is maintained.

There was a case some years ago when all of the mews of Sth Kensington were adopted by the council. people had plant pots outside their houses for decades and all of a sudden they were being issued with parking tickets. DYL's were painted round people's doormats etc so what seemed like a good idea by the council to prevent clogging the narrow streets by interlopers didn nothing but aggravate the people who lived there.

I woudl speak to all of your neighbours who actually have a curtillage on this road and see what they want before you spend money. Also look at the background of Dawood v Camden as that decision effectively allows councils to clobber people on their own land where the boundary is not clearly defined (and that statement is generous to what was actuallly said).

Also dont forget, the council has unlimited funds (your money!) to fight yo and no liability for any individual regardless of how unreasonable or unlawful their behaviour

[ericsbrother]

If you own the land without easments or rights over it andif there is room to pass without actually encroaching on that part of your land you could just put  a fence round it. obviously that will make parking for you awkward. However, the council will claim that their permit scheme is an easment in itself. No it isnt, you agreed to it.

Bit like me borrowing your lawnmower. I cant then lend it out myself or tell you how and when you can use it or refuse to return it to you upon such a request. If you agreed to let me manage your lawnmower the I can lend it out but it is still yours and I have to retun it subject to the conditiosn of the original management contract.

You will therefore need to look at what was agreed at the timeand whether there was a time limit agreed. It aint for the council to decide that time limit as they are just borrowing your lawnmower so to speak

[Michael Browne]

Quote

You will therefore need to look at what was agreed at the time

I would think that the wording of the original agreement will be crucial and whether it says anything about what happens if you withdraw your consent.

 

After 15 years do you or any of your neighbours still  have a copy?

Edited March 23, 2019 by Michael Browne

[Permitbay]

It is not about money, we happily paid to flag our frontage and we would happily pay our share of the road resurfacing costs.

1. It is about the council not being even-handed (in that the majority of householders from numbers 18-32 originally opted out and were not forced into the scheme as the council accepted their rights to do so) and 

2. The council not providing the service that the permits purport to entitle us to.

Residents living in houses 1-16 are in the scheme and residents 18-32 are not, and never have been. 

However, residents 18-32 were included in the consultation and asked if they wanted our scheme to continue....and the overall vote was 10-4 in favour. My opinion is that only those affected should have been balloted. The school were also asked. We feel that the vote was skewed to achieve the desired outcome.

We never originally voted to be in the scheme but the majority of residents from 1-16 did and so we went with it. 

However, it soon became obvious that we were paying for nothing as it wasn't policed enough to make it worthwhile buying 5 permits and a visitors permit book. We are happy to have parents parking for 15/20 mins per day to collect/drop off children. We are not happy to pay c£180 PA for worthless permits. I would rather give it to charity.

The scheme does not fit and has never fitted, the criteria set out for the creation of a permit parking zone as outlined on the Council's own website.

 

No documents exist from the original scheme and at that point, it was a simple yes/No vote. No contracts, no timescales. The TRO was created by the council and can be varied by them if they choose to do so. 

 

We just feel that we should have the ability to individually opt out of a scheme that is not what we thought we were buying. 

We are awaiting their written explanation as to why we cannot rescind our permission which was given implicitly not explicitly ( we didn't vote in favour but we acceded to the majority and allowed the scheme to go ahead)  before we take it further. They have not followed correct procedures and we intend to try to make them accountable for that via legal avenues and Local Government Ombudsman. Only time will tell if we are successful.

[king12345]

I like ericsbrother idea about the fence.

That would make think quite awkward for the council.

Police would say it's a civil matter and advise the council that knocking the fence down would be criminal damage.

The council would be forced to start a court case but in the mean time other residents could jump on the bandwagon and build a fence.

Imagine that...

[Permitbay]

It is a novel idea but we did put cones on the curb ( the pavement is wide enough for 4 to walk abreast) so they were not causing any obstruction and the council took them away when they remarked the parking bays. That theft is awaiting their response. So I can't imagine they would hesitate to remove a fence that did obstruct what they deem as 'their' highway even though it unadopted on this side. 

 

We really don't want to be difficult, we just don't want to be in a scheme which is useless.

[king12345]

Metal bollards?

[Jamberson]

Permitbay - I haven't commented so far, as I don't know where you stand. But reading the above I really think you are in the wrong place to get sound advice. If I were you I would get some advice from a qualified lawyer.

 

I don't know the ins and outs of this, except to point out that you cannot legally obstruct the highway, or (I believe) any public right of way.

[ericsbrother]

there are stil unanswered questions about the land and the rights of way over it. By having a TRO the council may well have adopted the land so agood look at your deeds and the map that goes with them will be necessary. The road may not belong to an individual and as you describe it the curtillage that is your property may have by way of continuous use a right of way over it but that is not the same as the council ever having rights to create a TRO as it wont be a public highway. TRO's can apply to a public right of way though even if the land  doesnt belong to the council. Some councils do apply the Dawood decision quite ruthlessly and ticket people in private car parks so getting a ticket for parking on your own land where there is no delineation is a very likey scenario.

You may have to fight this all the way to the high court but you need to really go through the deeds and other such sources of info before you do anything. Get your neighbours involed as well so that way if all 32 houses have a beef with the council then they will take more notice tha just one

Edited March 25, 2019 by ericsbrother

[Permitbay]

8 hours ago, ericsbrother said:

there are stil unanswered questions about the land and the rights of way over it. By having a TRO the council may well have adopted the land so agood look at your deeds and the map that goes with them will be necessary. The road may not belong to an individual and as you describe it the curtillage that is your property may have by way of continuous use a right of way over it but that is not the same as the council ever having rights to create a TRO as it wont be a public highway. TRO's can apply to a public right of way though even if the land  doesnt belong to the council. Some councils do apply the Dawood decision quite ruthlessly and ticket people in private car parks so getting a ticket for parking on your own land where there is no delineation is a very likey scenario.

You may have to fight this all the way to the high court but you need to really go through the deeds and other such sources of info before you do anything. Get your neighbours involed as well so that way if all 32 houses have a beef with the council then they will take more notice tha just one

 

 

Thanks, the land is definitely on our deeds and is definitely unadopted as I have a copy of the plan from LR as does my immediate neighbour. However, none of the neighbours wants to bother any further fighting the council as this has been going on for over 2 years with the council just going quiet and then not responding. Houses 18-32 aren't interested as although they voted in the consultation they are not affected in any way by the issue.

 

Now that the council have just repainted the lines, the neighbours in the scheme seem resigned to it.

 

I just dislike being walked all over and have all the FOI requests showing the  (lack of) policing of the scheme, tickets issued (dates/times) showing more tickets have been issued to residents over the years whose permits have dropped off than actual non-residents parking without permits!! Yet they are here every single day of term.

 

I am waiting for the full response to my last email as promised by their solicitor. However, as the bays are now remarked I am expecting to be told to suck it up. I will be taking it as far as I can and will take legal advice, but I just wondered if anyone had any experience of unilaterally leaving a permit scheme?

Edited March 25, 2019 by Permitbay

[hightail]

I don't have specific experience of any sort of permit scheme but I do of taking on a council highways department.  It got as far as a court on The Strand in London and I won.  To be fair they caved halfway through the second day, as we returned from lunch my counsel was approached by theirs with the magic words 'could I have a moment of your time'.  I count it as a win, it cost them a ridiculous amount of money   It got that far because stupid little people working for councils honestly believe they can say what they want, do what they want, tell outright lies, go to extraordinary lengths to intimidate the people they are paid to serve.  They aren't used to people standing up to them and they get away with it 99.9% of time.

 

As others have said, you need to check your status carefully and then hit them.  Get legal advice - not from some small town solicitor but from a big firm.  I was lucky, someone pointed me to the right people.  Don't be intimidated, don't believe a single word of what you're told by any council employee.  They are the equivalent of every miserable call centre monkey you've ever dealt with.  The brightest minds aren't attracted to council jobs after all.

 

 

 

 

Edited March 25, 2019 by hightail

[Permitbay]

Thank you, it would be so easy just to cave in like everyone else and pay for 5 permits but it is the principle. When someone repeats something often enough as in ' we do not need your permission despite it being your land' you do start to doubt yourself and I think that has happened with my neighbour. 

[Jamberson]

2 hours ago, hightail said:

 it cost them a ridiculous amount of money  

 

It got that far because stupid little people working for councils honestly believe they can say what they want, do what they want, tell outright lies, go to extraordinary lengths to intimidate the people they are paid to serve. 

 

don't believe a single word of what you're told by any council employee.  They are the equivalent of every miserable call centre monkey you've ever dealt with.  The brightest minds aren't attracted to council jobs after all.

 

It didn't cost "them" a penny. It cost YOU a ridiculous amount of money, you and every other tax payer unfortunate enough to live in your area.

 

You insult people, call them monkeys, liars, servants. Your attitude absolutely stinks. It's people like you who are the problem, not councils.

[hightail]

You are absolutely correct that it cost the taxpayer and it cost them much more than it might had it not been for the arrogance and ineptitude of the council employees involved.  Had they not been so they could have settled for a tiny  fraction of what it cost long before I even consulted a solicitor.  Things like this don’t get near a court without reason and it sure as hell wasn’t my choice to go there.

[ericsbrother]

before you set off dow that road you need to be absolutely sure of your position.

 

It may well be that part of the land is on your deeds but if there is an easement or right of way over it that will count for little. where I use to live I owned a strip of land in front of my house that I could do nothing with, couldnt enclose it or develop it because there was a restriction placed upon it by the council to allow for the sighting of a road junction by traffic travelling towards it.

 

the land was privately owned decades before the council placed this condition on it and I had no desire to do anything with it anyway but owning land doesnt mean you have rights to do what you want with it. 

 

i mentioned specific things and you havent come up with answers so when you decide how to progress this make sure you ask the right questions of whoever is looking into things for you. You may well have a good case for fighting the council's determination to clobber you for using your own land but there again they  can enforce anything they get right and you get wrong.

 

You avent even said where this road leads to, just a dead end or is there even a footpath that goes somewhere else? So any different permutations. what does your deed say aboyt access and curtillage?

adoption isnt necessary to enforce a TRO, that has already been sais.

the devil is in the detail and we are missing that.