Motorhomes welcome.... NOT!

Lady Groundhog and I love our house in the UK but are thinking we should maybe downsize as the current nest is not the easiest to lock up and leave when we go back to our family... so we went window shopping

Viewed an empty house where the neighbour was going to let us have a look round, we were the right age for his neighbourhood it seems, must have looked clean enough I guess, everything was wonderful until we said to him " And there is enough room to park our motorhome". BIG MISTAKE!

Not kidding, he suggested we left and said we would not be welcome in that street with a motorhome ( I think he referred to it as an eyesore actually) if we wanted to live there we should park it somewhere else.

My response is not printable unfortunately......

My neighbour has got a b****y Transit parked on his drive.
But then I have a motorhome on mine. 

PB

Hi there,

It's not unusual for the Deeds of any house in the UK to carry covenants.

They can range from how many household pets you can keep all the way up to forbidding the building of walls or carrying out a business.

The estate we live on is designated as being "open plan" and after over thirty years it still takes special permission to build walls or erect fences to the front of any of the properties.

Other covenants are that commercial vehicles cannot be parked on the road in front of a property and any vehicle parked on the land alongside a house cannot be parked "in front of the building line".

I tend to sympathise with the person who was showing you round the property.  Very often, people sign the covenants on their Deeds and then come back with "YOU cannot tell ME what I can and cannot do on MY land!"

They are wrong of course and in many cases it costs them a few thousand pounds to discover that fact, so my advice is to read the covenants on the Deeds of ANY property that you consider worth buying.

ALWAYS remember that the covenants are there for YOUR protection.

Sure, it's a bit irritating that we are restricted to a Duetto because we can't get a larger motorhome down the side of our house ....  

.... but this minor irritation is balanced by the fact that our neighbour can't decide to start breeding pigs in his back garden.  

Best regards,

Our deeds forbid us from having beanfeasts.

Hasn't stopped us having friends around for barbecues . . .  

cheers
Roger

One of my properties has a covenant that states no caravans allowed on the property, No one takes a blind bit of notice of the covenant and there are several caravans parked in the driveways. The one I live in has no covenant but the neighbors wish it had as at least one hates our motor home parked there. The others are less objectionable about it. Ironically the one who complains wanted a motorhome when we talked about 5 years ago. 
Were on the move once we sell. Not moving to an estate  tired of suburban living. Already arranged parking for motorhome with neighboring farmer, cost = decent bottle of scotch at Christmas. 

m8form8 wrote:........ Already arranged parking for motorhome with neighboring farmer, cost = decent bottle of scotch at Christmas. 

Hi there,

An absolute bargain ....   

.... but I suggest that you check out the problems other people have had with mice and take the relevant precautions!  

Best regards,

Jeepers is your Farmer a mouse?

For a covenant to be upheld the originator of the covenant has to be the one to get a legal ruling. Most were put in place by the builders. Many building companies get dissolved before setting up again under another name. Any covenants made cease once the originator is no longer around.
In Groundhogs case there was no mention of a covenant just a dislike of motorhomes. I wonder how many neighbours have caravans parked. 
Unless it was an estate with an existing covenant preventing motorhomes from being on the estate at all, you could park on the road, after all it is taxed and insured just like any car as long as it doesn't cause an obstruction . But simpler not to get into neighbour disputes so don't go and live there.

Groundhog, Farmer is just a nice bloke, has a CL site too but believes in helping his neighbors out and property we intend to buy backs onto his fields. Good point Dutto had not thought about the mice issues, it will however not be parked there forever as intend to dig up a rose bed so there is room to park Bertha..or her successor.  
Paulmold, that makes sense property i have with covenant in deeds was built in the 40s hence I guess reason no one has made people not park their caravans in driveways. I have never lived there, just inherited it but remember it being in the deeds when it was bought by my late Aunt.   I joked with her that she could not have her gypsy fortune telling van there when she bought it.

Must say I mildly resent the fee to park our van in a compound and having to drive several miles to do anything rather than just having to go out the door. We don't have the space, well we could have if my neighbour agreed to a joint driveway that would result in their (hideous) extension being demolished:biggrin:

I'm a bit jealous of a guy a few streets away who has a largish bungalow with his MH located in, what seems like, a car park behind his house. Not so good looking is another who has his Sundance pitched on what was his front garden. I just wonder about some of the folk in my area who have vans parked at their houses, my worry would be that it not being there is advertising an empty house?

When I win the lottery tonight I am going back to the house and telling the bloke next door, good news we are buying the house and even better news we are not bringing the motorhome on his advice.

We are going to open the house as a shelter for illegal immigrants and the generally undesirable!

Our Nuevo is parked on my drive in front of the house. When we had a caravan we had it in a storage compound and it really did stop us using it as it was a pain to have to take all our gear down to the caravan every time we wanted to go away and so it's use declined to a fortnight and two separate weeks per year. Having the motorhome at home means a lot more almost spontaneous use, probably 7 weeks and a similar number of weekends away this year.
Sometimes I do feel that where it is parked causes a blocked view of the road for our neighbours but then I look around the estate and see large works vans parked on drives or on the road with two wheels on the pavement (it is quite a narrow road), so then I don't feel so bad. Looking to move in 18 months or so and one criteria will be somewhere to park the motorhome out of sight.
As regards advertising when we are away, we have cameras and lights on timers etc and of course a burglar doesn't know if other family are still at home unless they actually know us.

Paulmold wrote:For a covenant to be upheld the originator of the covenant has to be the one to get a legal ruling. Most were put in place by the builders. Many building companies get dissolved before setting up again under another name. Any covenants made cease once the originator is no longer around.
In Groundhogs case there was no mention of a covenant just a dislike of motorhomes. I wonder how many neighbours have caravans parked. 
Unless it was an estate with an existing covenant preventing motorhomes from being on the estate at all, you could park on the road, after all it is taxed and insured just like any car as long as it doesn't cause an obstruction . But simpler not to get into neighbour disputes so don't go and live there.

Spot on Paul, a covenant is a promise form one person to another and its only the actual person who required the promise to be made who can take (civil) action if it is broken.

I didn't know when we bought it but our house had been the estate sales office and was the last sold.  All the other houses on the estate have covenants prohibiting caravans but ours doesn't - builder didn't care once all the houses were sold!

A few years ago I had a knock on the door, it was a chap from further in to the estate wanting to know if we had 'the' covenant as he was wanting to buy a caravan and keep it at home (as several others on the estate already did).  We had a long chat, I advised him that the covenant wasn't worth the paper it was written on and what he should consider was the opinion of his neighbours because whatever the deeds said, if they were unhappy then he would be!!.  At the end of the conversation he said "I suppose I should have mentioned I'm a policeman"!  Anyway he got his caravan and we even have another large motorhome on the estate now.

It is obvious when we are away from home - one of our neighbours always puts the emptied bins away when we are not there - I don't know which one and am too embarrassed to ask.

Hi there,

The estate we live on is over thirty years old ....

.... the ownership of the original builders has changed on two occasions ....

.... and the covenants are still valid.

This was demonstrated when a neighbour had to apply for and get permission to build a low wall along the front of his property AFTER the local Planning Authority had given their permission.

Why a low wall after all these years?  A new neighbour was letting his dog do his business on my neighbours lawn and failing to pick up the mess.

Times change, circumstances change and covenants can also change; but there has to be a valid reason.

Best regards,

Dutto wrote:
This was demonstrated when a neighbour had to apply for and get permission to build a low wall along the front of his property AFTER the local Planning Authority had given their permission.

There was no reason in criminal law for your neighbour to seek permission, he just chose to honour a promise he had made. Neither did he need to apply for planning permission, you can build a 6ft high boundary wall on your property without consent unless you live in one of the few areas (such as SSSI) where additional planning constraints apply.

I have a responsibility under the Court of Protection for a person and that is exactly what the neighbour did - build a 6ft wall against a covenant and without planning permission. They took this action because they had been denied planning permission to build an extension in that area. They then built a conservatory the size of the extension they wanted inside the wall. There was no action anyone could take against them. I did have a lawyer write to them and advise them that the wall width extended into the property that I was responsible for by 5cm and reserved the right for the wall to be relocated at some time in the future if requested.

Peter#1

Not true for boundary against a highway or footpath along a highway. 1m is the limit, unless a covenant or planning condition applies, (common on most estate built over the last 40 years.)

http://www.planningportal.gov.uk/permission/commonprojects/fenceswallsgates/

Ok - get your head around this:

http://uk.practicallaw.com/2-516-8168#

Why?

Hi there,

Making someone comply with a covenant is a civil action case but all costs are recoverable from the offender.

Having said that, I much prefer my Dad's system when his next-door-neighbour started to run a Plant Hire business from his home in a residential area.

My Mum wrote to the Local Council, District Council and Environmental Agency to get him to stop but, to be honest, my Dad wasn't all that concerned.

However, because Dad was the Rate Payer, Mum kept signing his name on all the correspondence and the day came when the next door neighbour wound down the window of his Jaguar car and from his own driveway called Dad over to the fence.

"If you write any more ****ing letters to anyone else I will have you." he told Dad.  Oh dear.  Threatening a 72 year old man with angina, silicosis and pneumoconiosis in his own back garden.

This was not a good move, as the neighbour found out when Dad jumped the fence, pulled him through the window of his car and said "You'd better have me now then, because if you come for me later on I'll kill you."

He meant every word and it took less than a month for the neighbour to find new premises; so I reckon that Mum's letters worked just fine. 

Best regards,

In essence: There is no clear statutory definition of a highway

We are fortunate that we have a wide and fairly  long drive, although it is a lot longer near the garage than it is the other side, we have a 24` caravan in front of garage, then my husbands, gap  a gap to the front door and rear gates, then my motor home next to a stone wall surrounding the garden border, no problems with the neighbours, only have one on th garage side and they have a caravan, we are on a lane outside of a village.


Years ago we had a caravan in store at a farmers barn with numerous others, a new one was taken across two fields had only been there 24 hours. Took ours home, it is convenient  easy to load, although most stuff is left in, I also use mh to go in to read or watch TV, it is my everyday vehicle can put up folks   if needed.

I do realise some of you don`t have a choice, that is what we looked at when viewing the property to buy. we did think about when we were away, then we have good neighbours across the lane who water our plants and look out for our property, as we went away in the MH caravan is still on drive, so perhaps doesn`t look as if anyone is away, as mh is very often not there when doing my daily trips.

no covenants apply. first house built on lane .

My Last house built in 1926 was on land once owned by the Duke of Sutherland, there was a covenant that you couldn't erect a building for lunatics or people suffering from lunacy.
They wouldn't get away with saying that today.

John.

artheytrate wrote:My Last house built in 1926 was on land once owned by the Duke of Sutherland, there was a covenant that you couldn't erect a building for lunatics or people suffering from lunacy...

Ah, so no way they could have put up a parliament building there, then!