what can you legally do to cars at home

i'd be interested to hear about this as well. i got a letter from the planning dept last year saying they had been notified that I was running a car repair business from the premises.

i called them and explained it was only 1 car - basic maintenance...we laughed it off and I have had no hassle since.

get a few curse word looks when I'm beavering away. just try to keep things tidy and make sure i keep noise to sensible hours, etc, etc....

I had this threat by my next door neighbour who is a state scrounger, daughter with 2 "fatherless children" etc. etc. (I fXXking hate him) He was going to complain that I was carrying out repairs including welding to my petrol car which he then pointed to. The "petrol" car was a Montego Turbo Diesel which I had never touched with a welder so that shut him up for a while. I had in fact been welding my Morris Minor. He obviously has a problem with his eyesight also.
He even wrote to the local Police Inspector about my boys playing football in the street which is a quiet cul-de-sac. I told my boss (who was the Inspector) to tell him to fxxk right off and keep his nose out of my business.
We just moved my sons old car off the drive today which has been there for some time. Underneath and down by the side were numerous discarded tab ends which is strange as no-one in my family smokes.
Why can`t scum like these keep their noses out of other hard working peoples business. (I enjoyed that rant)

So, when I take my cars to the bottom of my road (because its level) to do work on them, this is against the law?

unfortunately we now live in an age and country of wingers the best thing you can do is to just give as little reason for them to moan as pos by keeping the number of cars at the property to a minimum and keeping the garden as tidy as possible sadly as you are in rented accommodation it puts you on dodgy ground as the council can put pressure on your land load over it. you will probably find the main reason for the complaint is down to the fact you have a few cars on the road and somebody has laid claim to one of the spaces your your car are using regardless of weather they have a car to put in it or not that sadly is how petty most people are here now days .

Well theres a whole lot of grey areas and you can get an enforcement notice (maybe even an ASBO these days) preventing you from working on cars at home.

As Autofive points out some of this will be local bye laws rather than national laws so its locality specific.

You may also find that the deeds of covenant on your house prevent you doing certain activities (a lawyer I worked with was looking into his because it prevented him from parking more than one car on the drive or owning a caravan). These are more common on modern "executive development" type places than older houses, but always check.

Rented houses may have stuff in the rental agreement.

Now some people who work on cars at home, well, I'm glad they are not my neighbours. I know a chap who used to delight in curse word his neighbours off by doing stuff like firing up a big block chevy with open headers in his back garden at 1 am, or others who liked doing burnouts in front of the old guy whop complains house. Funny until there's a copper there and you get done for "without due care"

The more you don't curse word people off the more you can get away with. As soon as you are on the radar of the local authorities and complaining neighbours then you are in for pain. A chap I knew had orders on him so he couldn't even use an aerosol... Seriously.

I try keep on the good side of neighbours (as said the retried ones with nothing to do all day but curtain-twitch are the worst) and not make a mess or too much smell or refuse or noise outside of "reasonable" hours.

All of which is fair enough. I get narked at other people's loud music or whatever, they don't want to be hearing my angle grinder etc.

Fair play should be reciprocated.

To echo what Alistair said - there are laws/bylaws and inlaws regarding it all, but all these are irrelevant until someone gets sufficiently ticked off to report you.

Some people are just plain arseholes, but even with those, the key is to keep as friendly with the neighbours as you can - Keep things to sociable hours, keep it as tidy as possible and be reasonable with parking (Filling the drive up with projects and then having to take up those spaces on the road, especially if it is "congested" anyway isn't good game!)

At home all the neighbours are quite reasonable, and most of the noise comes from the bloke with the t25 and Karmann Ghia down the road. My dads house was the same (small cul-de-sac with my 106 on axle stands for days at a time when I swapped engines) the only complaint I got is when I got the ignition coil wet and it backfired when trying to get it started and the family over the way were trying to get the kids to sleep) but I was very apologetic and fixed their son's pushbike a couple of times, so they were happy.

There is a fine line between someone being mildly annoyed by noise you are making getting a job done, and them just getting angry and getting it into their head that you are the noise devil sent to ruin their life. The balance can generally be swayed by just being friendly to start with, talking to them in person and perhaps a little compromise.

We are restoring a t25 on my mates drive, in a little cul-de-sac. Big old rusty t25, 5 different colours and whole weekends spent grinding and nobody has complained yet, because we try and be friendly. The next door neighbour works nights so we made sure to tell him, (and everyone else) to just let us know if we are curse word them off and we'll happily pack it in / move onto a quieter job - Catch it before it becomes a problem

Good luck hope it works out OK

I went through the whole angry neighbour/borderline business use/council involvement thing exactly 10 years ago this month. The solution is easy.... Rent a unit, go self employed and live that dream!

ps, cutting a hillman imp up in the street doesn't go down well with the curtain twitchers. lmao.

^^LOL, Bri! ;D