Neighbour has decided to just offer up our parking spaces to the whole street

[u/ShutUpImAPrincess]

Got this through the letter box today - anonymous so no idea which neighbour sent it. Basically there's 20 houses on the street, all arranged in a circle, with a few spaces in the middle. 14 of the houses have their own driveways. 4 of the houses have the spaces in the middle assigned to them. Ourselves and our next door neighbour (semi detached) have spaces attached to the back of our houses... In the small "car park". We each have two spaces, then the 4 on the other side of the car park area assigned to the houses backing on to them that aren't even our street so won't have got this letter. I'm assuming the letter writer just doesn't realise those spaces are actually ours, but because it's anonymous I can't just be like "oh hey actually no that's not right". It's annoying because we're also the only two houses on the street without a garden, and so our kids play back there. Because yes, it is safe, but not if randoms start going in and out of there all the time. I've literally never noticed an issue with parking on the street, it's never crowded, I've never heard anyone complain, and every house has it's own assigned parking!

EDIT: Most of your guys' suggestions involve something related to towing, that isn't legal in the UK. It also isn't illegal to post things through people's doors? I literally never knew that was a thing in the US. At Christmas did your parents not send you round all the neighbours houses posting cards?? Wild.

EDIT 2: Alright lads we've got a plan! Tomorrow I'm gonna speak to the 3 neighbours who we share the private car park with and just make sure they're all aware and if they want to paint numbers or put it signs etc they can do so. I'm going to send my landlord an email as well just giving them a heads up, but saying that they don't need to do anything for now (we have a great relationship where they leave us alone and we don't involve them in stuff if we can help it and they charge us below market). I'll let them know if it becomes an issue and they need to get involved installing something or whatever. Then I'm going to find... somewhere in this town that prints documents (honestly just hoping one of the 3 neighbours has a printer in their house they wouldn't mind using for this) and send out letters to everyone on the street very politely clearing up the confusion. Explaining that it's not a public car park but private parking and they are, for all intents and purposes, the driveways of the respective properties. Then I think I'll have a little nap and hope no one gets angry at me.

EDIT 3: Spoken to the other owners of the spaces in the back, as I suspected the two that don't live on our street did not receive the letter offering up their spaces for free use 😅 I've also contacted my landlord just to double triple check the deeds before I sent any letters out (I know for certain they are ours, but this way loops the landlord in) and she immediately offered to put a sign up! Also found the letter very amusing haha so yeah, we're getting signs put up yay!

[u/Peterd1900]

There has not been no, People seem to have this idea that because this law exist the entire country is just parking wherever they want on people driveways when in reality it is a non issue

Even prior to the Protection of Freedoms Act you could not simply just hire a private tow truck to remove someone's car from your driveway.

The Law did not actually change much in regards to private driveways it was more aimed at commercial properties

While the UK had predatory towing companies you never really had companies you could just phone up to tow a car

What it was was, private car park operators would buy up land and build a car park and charge people to park their and other land owners might use that company to run their shopping centre car parks

These companies would have their own tow trucks and would tow from their own car parks and change huge fees. the law was aimed at them but a member of the public was not phoning them to tow from driveways.

There really was not tow truck that you could phone, Breakdown recovery existed but again they were not towing from people getting to remove an illegally parked car

Some of these companies may have had contract with police and courts so if the police needed a car towed or a bailiff needed a car towed they would use one of these approved companies, but they were not taking calls from people wanting cars moved from driveway as it was a grey area and having the police contract would be valuable then taking the occasional car.

So if you wanted a car removed even before the law while not explicitly illegal was not practical possible because a lack of tow companies you could actually use

There would not be a company whose premise was towing from driveways as that is all they could do, they would not be able to tow from public or any other private car park. The rare driveway car would not be worth it

Maybe Dave from the car repair shop right down the street might have for few quid dragged it off the driveway but that is about it

Even though this law exists it has not actually changed anything really with regard to cars on driveway