Legal requirement: house numbers

[mph1977]

Red Devil said:

JumboBeef said:

Red Devil said:

The house I lived in during my childhood is a mile from the nearest village and four miles from the post town. It dates from the reign of Elizabeth I and has never had a number. Not at the Land Registry, on RM's database, or in any local authority record. When we lived there a nameplate was totally unnecessary. Everybody in the surrounding area who needed to knew where to find it.

So, if your sister/mother/whoever went into cardiac arrest at 4 in the morning and you were being talked through CPR on the phone by the 999 call handler, would you still think a nameplate would be 'totally unnecessary' if I or my colleagues were outside with skills, drugs and equipment to help.......but we can't find your fecking house because it isn't displaying a name?

This is a scenario I and others have played out many times, sometimes loosing many minutes which will in certain cases mean the difference between living or dying.

Please make sure your house has its number or name on display and can be seen from the road.

As it happens we had cause to need attendance by the fire brigade and an ambulance during the time I lived there. Both (separate) incidents were after dark and long before the days of satellites/GPS/online mapping and in neither case was there any difficulty at all in finding our house.

I have no idea what location aids you use but the house has been marked by name on Ordnance Survey maps from long before I was born.
I take your point though as that won't be the case for many (most?) rural properties.

OS map wise if you are out in the sticks a 6 figure OS ref can be of assistance ... some of the rural 999 services havesuggested this in the past ...

[carmadgaz]

There is an old canal line (filled in 100+ years ago) running through our village and as such we have 2 sets of Canal Cottages. Despite no name or number on either set the parcels seem to get here (despite one pair being off the main road and one pair being almost hidden drives).

Only problem is despite the postcodes being different we keep getting couriers dropping parcels off here for the other cottages (never seems to be the other way around though).

Where we are a number would alert people to there being a house there at all so we don't have one. People coming here get either a marked map or we have gone and waited on the road for them. Never had a problem with an emergency vehicle finding us though.

[JumboBeef]

Red Devil said:

JumboBeef said:

Red Devil said:

The house I lived in during my childhood is a mile from the nearest village and four miles from the post town. It dates from the reign of Elizabeth I and has never had a number. Not at the Land Registry, on RM's database, or in any local authority record. When we lived there a nameplate was totally unnecessary. Everybody in the surrounding area who needed to knew where to find it.

So, if your sister/mother/whoever went into cardiac arrest at 4 in the morning and you were being talked through CPR on the phone by the 999 call handler, would you still think a nameplate would be 'totally unnecessary' if I or my colleagues were outside with skills, drugs and equipment to help.......but we can't find your fecking house because it isn't displaying a name?

This is a scenario I and others have played out many times, sometimes loosing many minutes which will in certain cases mean the difference between living or dying.

Please make sure your house has its number or name on display and can be seen from the road.

As it happens we had cause to need attendance by the fire brigade and an ambulance during the time I lived there. Both (separate) incidents were after dark and long before the days of satellites/GPS/online mapping and in neither case was there any difficulty at all in finding our house.

I have no idea what location aids you use but the house has been marked by name on Ordnance Survey maps from long before I was born.
I take your point though as that won't be the case for many (most?) rural properties.

In the old days, crews worked in local areas and so know local properties.

Nowadays, with Sat nav we can be sent anywhere, many miles away. I have been sent to towns I've never been to before, let alone streets.

It doesn't matter if it is marked on an OS map and known by old Bob the clobber, it all looks the same at 4am in the driving rain (or even on a sunny afternoon). Get a number/name on display!

[Adrian E]

JumboBeef said:

In the old days, crews worked in local areas and so know local properties.

Nowadays, with Sat nav we can be sent anywhere, many miles away.

I used to house share with a paramedic in Thames Valley area - on night shift they used to cruise up and down the M4 waiting for a call that could take them to any one of 3 counties, potentially right at the other end of the 'patch' they were covering. They were chronically understaffed even then....

[FiF]

Adrian E said:

JumboBeef said:

In the old days, crews worked in local areas and so know local properties.

Nowadays, with Sat nav we can be sent anywhere, many miles away.

I used to house share with a paramedic in Thames Valley area - on night shift they used to cruise up and down the M4 waiting for a call that could take them to any one of 3 counties, potentially right at the other end of the 'patch' they were covering. They were chronically understaffed even then....

When I needed medical help the other day, the paramedic came from round the corner having been sat at one of their satellite stations. The Ambo crew came from the other side of the county, 30 odd miles away. Never ever been to the area before, as it was in open land they needed to be talked in to get them to an access point. There is an emergency access for vehicles which is locked, nobody had a clue as to how to gain access to a key. Extraction needed some inventive thought,thankfully no ghoulish camera crew on hand as it wasn't elegant. When up and about in some months going to investigate this access question, off topic sorry.