Offsite Airport Parking using private driveway

[pin1onu]

A friend of mine recently bought a property in the neighbourhood of an airport.  In the past few months they have had issues with a vehicles being  parked on their driveway for several days at a time.    The suspicion is that a rogue offsite airport outfit is using their driveway  to store cars for their clients. He has contacted the cops who said that they can't/won't remove any vehicle and that he commits an offense if he has it moved.  I have suggested that the simplest way of preventing this is some form of collapsible  lockable bollard(s) to prevent them getting the car on the driveway in the first place.  

My question is if this happens again, can he raise a lockable bollard or install one to stop a vehicle leaving and can he demand a release fee tom compensate for the trespass - i.e. the old distress feasant route?  

[unclebulgaria67]

Is he based in the UK ? If, not get local advice.

 

In the UK, private land owners can take actions to try to charge for parking, but have to go through a process. Not that straightforward, has to put up warning notices about private land and costs of parking without permission of landowner. Then has to send invoice to register owner of vehicle and take to Civil Court, if they don't pay up.  Cannot put up bollard or prevent the vehicle from being driven away.

 

Suggest neighbours in the road get together and discuss how they are going to deal with this problem.  contact local Council about this and see what they can do to help.

[hightail]

There is an identical story running in the press at present.  In that case the resident rents the property and got in touch with her landlord who, it turns out, registered the driveway on some parking app years ago.  Might be worth checking the previous owners had not done something similar.

[honeybee13]

Are you able to post up a link please, HT? That article could be interesting.

 

HB

[hightail]

I'll try and find it again.  It popped up on my newsfeed on two separate occasions, once as the 'mystery car' story and then with the mystery solved.  It was a house close to Birmingham airport, that I do remember

[hightail]

Mystery solved into holidaymaker parking car on furious mum's drive for Birmingham Airport - Birmingham Live

WWW.BIRMINGHAMMAIL.CO.UK

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Sheldon mum-of-two left powerless to move mystery car on driveway - but a note has revealed why it happened

That was quicker than I expected - should have more faith in myself.

[Ethel Street]

Rather depressing advice from RAC is that there is nothing that can be done about this in practice.

 

Is it illegal for someone else to park on your driveway? | RAC Drive

 

This is the 'mystery solved' story, first thought to be a scammer

 

Mystery solved into holidaymaker parking car on furious mum's drive for Birmingham Airport - Birmingham Live (birminghammail.co.uk)

 

The only thing that seems legal is to put a lockable bollard on your drive to prevent anyone entering it, but it seems it would be illegal to use the bollard to stop the car leaving. Or, if you don't use the drive yourself, a fence across it. 

 

I guess it's one of those things that happened so rarely in the past that lawmakers paid it no attention, but it seems to be becoming a 'legal loophole' that fraudsters can exploit,. There have been previous media reports about this

 

Scammers list driveways on parking apps without owners knowledge | PetrolPrices

 

There have been reports of  dodgy airport 'meet and greet' parking operators but they seem to involve the operators parking the cars  on local streets or in muddy fields many miles away rather than on private driveways. Private driveway airport parking is usually linked to scammers putting  a fake listing of your driveway on a parking app.

 

[Ethel Street]

Further thought @pin1onu your friend should search as many parking apps as he can find and see if his driveway has been listed by scammers. If it has get it delisted from the app.

[dx100uk]

Mum gets answers after mystery of holidaymaker parked on her drive is solved

WWW.MSN.COM

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'I can’t believe it'

 

[The GodMother]

Council and police wont do anything.

A friend of mine lives near Heathrow. She has a driveway, well more like had, Anyway spent months daily complaining to council, Landlord, Police, Councillors, MPs basically anyone.  Nothing Done.

 

After about a year Landlord put up a higher fence and massive gates with abilities to bolt and padlock the gate on inside.  With a single gate with lock the other side. Problem solved for about 3 weeks. One day came home to find the single gate had been forced open and left open the padlock cut off gate and a car in drive.

Police said well we cant be bothered to do anything as no time or resources. Not even a crime number so next day New padlock new gate lock.2 weeks later same thing but car gone. 

Again contacted Police again not bothered actually advised to her move. Again she replaced both locks. 

 

She has put CCTV up but this has not really helped as the Police have not bothered to watch the footage she has taken to them after months of failed visits to property to collect it. She is is getting the money replaced by Landlord  but not the point. She get so very well with the locksmiths tho.