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Rights of way and stolen land
cashorcheque
Posts: 116 Forumite
Hi there,
My OH and I bought a house almost three years ago in the middle of a terrace of four. At the moment, the gardens are in a very higgledy-piggledy state. Next to the house on the right end of the terrace is a space large enough to park a car in, with a gate behind it, and a path from that gate runs along the back of three of the properties (to ours, which is second from the left). This property (on the right end) has a garden double its width because the house next to it has no garden at all - i.e., it has a large square garden on the other side of the path double the width of the property itself.
As I said, the house next to it has no garden at all.
Our house, which is next along, has a garden directly behind the garden of the house on the right end. So again, it is double the width of that house, but it is at the back of the entire plot of land.
When the path that runs across the back of the three properties gets to our house it opens up to accommodate a brick outhouse, which we own a large proportion of and use as a shed, but which also contains three former toilets, one of which we own, and the other two owned by the houses on either side of us. To get to our garden we walk round this shed and along a path in the garden of property on the left end of the terrace. Their garden appears to come straight off the back of the property and run in a strip to the end, though it widens at this point to accommodate the path.
The property on the left end, according to our deeds, owns the car space and the existing path.
However, they have recently been selling this property and it has come up on their deeds that the existing path does not have any formal or legal status. Instead, in the past, there used to be a path running from the car space along the right-hand wall of the garden owned by the right end house, and then along the back of what is now their garden. This terminated in the middle of the plot of land (behind the outhouse) so that we could all get access to our gardens. At some point in the past (at least 20 years ago) this land was stolen by the right-end house and appropriated as part of their garden.
Now, the left-end house has been sold because the owners, without consulting anybody else, have put in place a statutory declaration to say that the existing arrangement has been in place for a long time and is acceptable.
This leaves us with no legal means of accessing our own garden, because the path we use is actually part of the left-end house's garden and we depend on the goodwill of the owners to allow us to continue to use it. The new owners are happy about this, but we are hoping to sell in the next year or two and this is going to present us with a huge problem. We own a piece of land we have no legal right to access, and all because 20 years ago somebody stole the path we are supposed to be able to use.
I have contacted all the neighbours and asked if they think it might be better to do away with all these arrangements and simply have strip lawns running off the back of our properties. Three of the four say yes, but the woman who owns the garden that (before she owned it) stole the path says she likes her garden as it is and will not sell or change any part of it.
Where do we stand? Is there anything we can do? And why didn't this come up on our own deeds?
Thank you in advance (for those of you who have made it this far through my complicated post!)
My OH and I bought a house almost three years ago in the middle of a terrace of four. At the moment, the gardens are in a very higgledy-piggledy state. Next to the house on the right end of the terrace is a space large enough to park a car in, with a gate behind it, and a path from that gate runs along the back of three of the properties (to ours, which is second from the left). This property (on the right end) has a garden double its width because the house next to it has no garden at all - i.e., it has a large square garden on the other side of the path double the width of the property itself.
As I said, the house next to it has no garden at all.
Our house, which is next along, has a garden directly behind the garden of the house on the right end. So again, it is double the width of that house, but it is at the back of the entire plot of land.
When the path that runs across the back of the three properties gets to our house it opens up to accommodate a brick outhouse, which we own a large proportion of and use as a shed, but which also contains three former toilets, one of which we own, and the other two owned by the houses on either side of us. To get to our garden we walk round this shed and along a path in the garden of property on the left end of the terrace. Their garden appears to come straight off the back of the property and run in a strip to the end, though it widens at this point to accommodate the path.
The property on the left end, according to our deeds, owns the car space and the existing path.
However, they have recently been selling this property and it has come up on their deeds that the existing path does not have any formal or legal status. Instead, in the past, there used to be a path running from the car space along the right-hand wall of the garden owned by the right end house, and then along the back of what is now their garden. This terminated in the middle of the plot of land (behind the outhouse) so that we could all get access to our gardens. At some point in the past (at least 20 years ago) this land was stolen by the right-end house and appropriated as part of their garden.
Now, the left-end house has been sold because the owners, without consulting anybody else, have put in place a statutory declaration to say that the existing arrangement has been in place for a long time and is acceptable.
This leaves us with no legal means of accessing our own garden, because the path we use is actually part of the left-end house's garden and we depend on the goodwill of the owners to allow us to continue to use it. The new owners are happy about this, but we are hoping to sell in the next year or two and this is going to present us with a huge problem. We own a piece of land we have no legal right to access, and all because 20 years ago somebody stole the path we are supposed to be able to use.
I have contacted all the neighbours and asked if they think it might be better to do away with all these arrangements and simply have strip lawns running off the back of our properties. Three of the four say yes, but the woman who owns the garden that (before she owned it) stole the path says she likes her garden as it is and will not sell or change any part of it.
Where do we stand? Is there anything we can do? And why didn't this come up on our own deeds?
Thank you in advance (for those of you who have made it this far through my complicated post!)
0
Comments
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my first step would be to get the title and plan of all houses from the landregistry... £4 each so that you can see exactly who owns what...... talk is not necessarily true....0
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Hi, I agree with clutton. However, I find the post very difficult to understand and way too lengthy lol. Hope you manage to sort it though....Good luck :@)0
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Yes, we will be doing that straight away. But assuming this really is the case (and having no reason to think it isn't, since both the buyers and the sellers have separately explained to us the complex legal situation they have found themselves in) then what do we do?0
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I appreciate that the post is long lol! But it can't be explained any more clearly! The basic version is that a path which was used for access of all our properties has been stolen by one of us, and now there is a statutory declaration that it can remain. In the process of all this it has been revealed that the two paths we currently use have no legal status and that one of them actually belongs entirely to another property, so that we have no legally-ratified access to our own garden.0
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cashorcheque wrote: »I appreciate that the post is long lol! But it can't be explained any more clearly!
A picture/google earth pic would help enormously
I was born too late, into a world that doesn't care
Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair0 -
Surely rather than everybody mucking about rearranging their gardens to behind the houses (which has opposition by the one difficult neighbour), you're better tackling this with trying to set up some formal right of way with the people at the left hand end? That way you don't have to try to get 4 people to agree to this, only yourself and the left hand neighbour?Make £2026 in 2026
Prolific £177.46, TCB £10.90, Everup £27.79, Roadkill £1.17
Total £217.32 10.7%Make £2025 in 2025 Total £2241.23/£2025 110.7%
Prolific £1062.50, Octopoints £6.64, TCB £492.05, Tesco Clubcard challenges £89.90, Misc Sales £321, Airtime £70, Shopmium £53.06, Everup £106.08, Zopa CB £30, Misc survey £10
Make £2024 in 2024 Total £1410/£2024 70%Make £2023 in 2023 Total: £2606.33/£2023 128.8%0 -
I know how you must feel though. We live on a row of terraced houses and technically we should have access through to the back of the house somewhow. However, Our neighbours have a gate on either side of our house and one has a padlock on, the other has blocked it up. Now I am sure that this is illegal. It is so annoying to think that people take advantage. In fact, this post has given me an idea to talk of on a new post for my predicament.
As i said, hope you sort it.0 -
i dont believe that a statutory declaration per se removes your rights... i believe a Stat Dec in these circumstances (i bought houses with similar circumstances) will only say something like... !, xx,, have used X path for X years...... signed before a Solicitor who is a Commissioner for Oaths...
This Declaration does not give the neighbour OWNERSHIP, merely a statement that CLAIMS ownership...... I believe only a court can award ownership in any dispute.... but that is an expensive way forward..... i would talk to the land registry - they are very helpful to members of the public (which is why i said find the titles and make sure you understand what information is registered (rather than what neighbours tell you) and them see what LR say) and then you can talk to them from a stance of understanding the legal situation rather than what others with different vested interests have told you....
Slinkys idea is a good one.....0 -
You need to download all the deeds from the land registry site, you probably also need to go back to the solicitor that did the conveyancing for you. You need to find out why the hell you have been using a path that you have no right of way over, and why you have not been using the path that you do have right of way over. Agree with the others you should not be looking to get all four houses on board, that means four lenders that would have to agree any changes to the deeds and four sets of legal fees! Your issue is with the property on the right end, so no idea why you are annoyed at the property on the left end as they do not have to consult anyone when selling their own property and own land.Declutterbug-in-progress.⭐️⭐️⭐️ ⭐️⭐️0
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I can't seem to upload my Paint diagram of it to this, and Google Earth doesn't show clearly enough what I mean. I'm so sorry! But thanks so much for all your replies so far - that really helps.0
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