Colchester MP hits out at 'snobby' van ban estate

[worsy]

Colchester MP hits out at 'snobby' van ban estate
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-38506338

Am I missing something?, this has been going on for years, certainly remember buying a house over 10 years ago with a similar covenant.

Possibly news but thought it would interest this section.

[singlecoil]

It will only be enforced until all the houses are sold, after that the developer won't give a flying fk.

[Jasandjules]

Loads of covenants on one of our old houses even down to the type of fence we had to maintain...

[bimsb6]

Where i live has a no commercial vehicle overnight parking covenant from 25 years back , lucky i know the developer lol . It has never been enforced .

[Willy Nilly]

Thing is, it's ok if there is acres of parking, but most vans now are enormous (I drive a LWB Transit) and take up a lot of parking space and take up more than their fair share of parking space(s). People should read the covenants before they buy a house and leave the van at work.

[Jasandjules]

As for acres of parking, of course not, that is half the problem. I am willing to bet this estate has been designed (like others) to be hard to park down and with fewer parking spaces than properties. So a large van parked up will be a huge issue.

Welcome to the great AGW scam.

[Don]

singlecoil said:

It will only be enforced until all the houses are sold, after that the developer won't give a flying fk.

This is my experience. They'll cause merry hell until the last house is sold. After that you are on your own.

First property I bought you couldn't change the front garden until it was ten years old: Grass and gravel. Amazingly people stuck with that. Ten years in (two into my ownership) everybody got their front gardens block paved...

[Andehh]

We pass a row of 4 parked up in varying locations on one short new build street, 3 commercial Gas/Leccy ones (+ associated trailers with generator/digger) and one bright yellow one on the way to out house. I do feel sorry for whoever has to look out on the combination of them every day and try and park around them.

[anonymous-user]

Willy Nilly said:

People should read the covenants before they buy a house and leave the van at work.

100% this.

It's NOT about snobbery. It's about vans being bigger than parking spaces, and therefore being parked in inappropriate places - not nice for residents, as the van will invariably be parked away from the front window of the owner.

Legal, maybe, but decent neighbourly behaviour? Nope.

Want to be able to park the works van, wife's car, weekend car, daughter's car, daughter's boyfriend's car, caravan, trailer etc? Then buy a house with a half acre front drive, or one not on a tiny postage stamp blue-suit estate.

[Risotto]

The management company of a development built about 10 years ago got in touch recently, whining about the tenants parking a driving school vehicle in the residents car park, so I guess these covenants are still enforced in some places. Seemed rather petty to me, given that in this instance it was a normal sized car that happens to be used for commercial purposes.

[CaptainCosworth]

I didn't think anyone paid attention to these sorts of covenants? How are they actually enforced?

We have a no van policy on our development, but it's ignored. I don't really care if the van is a standard transit sized job and isn't obstructing anyone, but when someone parks abandons a lwb van on a corner or it sticks out across the pavement then it does annoy me.

Or when a couple moved into a flat near us which has a single garage but no other parking, and proceed to fill the garage with junk and then park their van and car wherever they can find space (even if it obstructs other people)

It doesn't help that most new developments are so car unfriendly, so rather than the traditional garage/driveway combo it's allocated parking spaces, etc. To be honest it's just asking for disputes.

[CaptainCosworth]

Our development also has a convenant banning satellite dishes on the front of houses, which has resulted in some people having dishes at the end of their garden mounted on the shed, or raised on a massive pole because their house faces the wrong way.

What makes it more bizarre is that because of the layout of the development, our neighbour's 'front' faces the opposite direction to ours, so we have our satellite dish next to the front of their house, and vice versa

[Sheepshanks]

Andehh said:

We pass a row of 4 parked up in varying locations on one short new build street, 3 commercial Gas/Leccy ones..

I didn't know British Gas generally did this, but there's one of their vans always parked outside of "office hours" slap at the end (turning area) of the frontage road of a new estate by us. I don't know if there's any upset about it, but it doesn't do anything for the look of the place.

When my inlaws sold their very nice house to a very smart mid-30's couple, the guy said he was a window cleaner. Inlaws assumed he owned a commercial window cleaning company but on the moving in day he turned up in a big van with his ladders on the roof! It won't fit between the sandstone pillars at the top of the drive so it's parked on the road. Neighbours are well pissed off.

[Snake the Sniper]

Sheepshanks said:

I didn't know British Gas generally did this, but there's one of their vans always parked outside of "office hours" slap at the end (turning area) of the frontage road of a new estate by us. I don't know if there's any upset about it, but it doesn't do anything for the look of the place.

When my inlaws sold their very nice house to a very smart mid-30's couple, the guy said he was a window cleaner. Inlaws assumed he owned a commercial window cleaning company but on the moving in day he turned up in a big van with his ladders on the roof! It won't fit between the sandstone pillars at the top of the drive so it's parked on the road. Neighbours are well pissed off.

It's common practice now to get the guys to take their vans home each night. Saves BG/Eon etc having to securely park them overnight and the associated cost in travel time to a central yard. The ones with the diggers on are usually parked a bit more securely though, to help prevent theft....

[worsy]

CaptainCosworth said:

It doesn't help that most new developments are so car unfriendly, so rather than the traditional garage/driveway combo it's allocated parking spaces, etc. To be honest it's just asking for disputes.

Under the Labour Gov in the earlier 00s it was policy to make it unfriendly. New developments were supposed to have better transport links and thus no requirement to have a car. In the town I used to live in the bus couldn't get down the narrow streets for all the cars abandoned parked

[Yipper]

Classic middle-class, cul-de-sac, curtain-twitching snobbery. But understandable. Rightly or wrongly, branded vehicles do bring places down, not up.

[Risotto]

Yipper said:

Rightly or wrongly, branded vehicles do bring places down, not up.

Depends on the vehicle and the brand I suppose...

[FourWheelDrift]

Wow all those people with jobs bringing the tone of the estate down, why can't they be unemployed spongers off the state instead.

Also I see elsewhere they say it's because they need the road clear for emergency vehicle access, which means it's a typical new estate and the roads aren't wide enough to begin with.

[CAPP0]

Willy Nilly said:

Thing is, it's ok if there is acres of parking, but most vans now are enormous (I drive a LWB Transit) and take up a lot of parking space and take up more than their fair share of parking space(s). People should read the covenants before they buy a house and leave the van at work.

The key issue is that having hordes of vans left lying around a residential area every night makes the place look st.

[Andehh]

Sheepshanks said:

Andehh said:

We pass a row of 4 parked up in varying locations on one short new build street, 3 commercial Gas/Leccy ones..

I didn't know British Gas generally did this, but there's one of their vans always parked outside of "office hours" slap at the end (turning area) of the frontage road of a new estate by us. I don't know if there's any upset about it, but it doesn't do anything for the look of the place.

2 are Scottish Electric/SSE and the third is EoN if I remember correctly. All are there every night in various parking spots. The fact that they usually come equipped with trailers is what adds insult to injury. Generators, diggers, cable/pipe rolls etc etc...