Arena use at livery yard

[bz88]

Hello. We are at the livery yard that has riding school horses too. There’s around 10 ridden horses including our pony(that’s for private livery horses) and many more rs horses.
We have two sand schools, one for livery clients which is 20x40 and riding school 20x60 which we are actually not allowed to use unless we have lesson booked with r/s instructor otherwise school is padlocked and chained so we are left with smaller arena to share.
I have coming instructor teaching my daughter every Saturday 10-11 so I book sand school for that hour every week, mind you it’s only an hour per week. Some other liveries book school in peak times multiple times per week. We do use school for most of the days after my daughter’s school but we not booking for sole use, we are happy to share and if it’s too busy we wait and ride later or just hack.
It has come to my attention that there were liveries that got problems with us booking that school for an hour on Saturday morning as according to them they can’t ride in that time mind you the reason I have booked that time because I knew nobody using school then. It has come across as bit of the bitc%#ing as this wasn’t said to my face I happen to overhear that.
Our yo doesn’t do much of the maintenance so me and some other people(not the person moaning) have maintained the school, spreaded new fibre after we asked yo to redo the school after r/s put padlock on their arena, am I being entitled to book school that I have raked, spreaded fibre and spent days to finish it so my daughter and I have somewhere to ride? Because according to moaning livery I am. Mind you that livery doesn’t even ride their horse often, maybe once a month. The reason I don’t use riding school because instructor there cannot offer my daughter regular private lessons after school only groups in the weekends which my daughter doesn’t enjoy and finds it stressful.
What would you consider Saturday morning a peak time?
Do you have booking systems at your yard? How to you get around sharing your arena fairly?
Thank you

 

[Toby_Zaphod]

The instructure we normally use is based at the yard just across the lane from where we are. There has been occasions when we have had a lesson at our yard & we book the school. You need to book it because oiu cannot have a private lesson when others are riding in the arena as well as your self. Like you we normally will book the school when it is rarely used. We don't have any problems but we only have around 12 horses at livery & there are only around 5/6 owners.

 

[Zoeypxo]

Our school can be booked on a first come first serve basis. If you was to book lets say saturday 9am that is your slot and no one can override that.
I think it’s completely reasonable for you to want the school for a lesson once a week, just ignore the other liveries.

 

[sassandbells]

When I was on a livery yard peak times for the school (similar set up to yours with a RS and livery school) were 8-12 on Saturday and Sunday mornings, along with 3:30-6:30pm in the week. Generally if you wanted to ride at that time you’d end up sharing with someone else.. I ended up having lessons at 7am because I didn’t want to share . Generally if people wanted to use the school privately they’d book outside of “normal” / peak times, but we had about 30 liveries.

At the end of the day if the schools free to book at 10am on a Saturday then I can’t see anything wrong with booking it for your lesson?

 

[Red-1]

I would just check what the rules are with the YO. If you are following the rules, that is that.

I like yerds with clear rules, such as no private booking in peak hours, as sassandbells defines them, and then a max of, say, 4 hours private booking time a week at other times (depending on number of liveries V space in the school.