Change a Right of Way??

fivepound

Hi, Im thinking of buying a cottage which is the end of terrace. I viewed the cottage and it's great although 1 thing is bothering me and that is a path which runs right through the side garden which is a "right of way" for the cottage next door to gain access from the lane to their back garden. I downloaded the Title Plan and this confirmed that it is classed as a right of way. The vendor tells me that the lady next door (2 bedroom cottage) uses it to wheel her bin through once a week and also as access for any tradesmen etc. This cottage is also up for sale now so no idea who will be living there in the future. My question is this, Ok, so theres a right of way there and people are entitled to access BUT can I move the path so that its at the end of my garden but still goes from the lane to her garden?

Thx

whambamboo

You can apply to your council to stop up or divert a right of way. Generally they seek not to reduce others rights, but diversion might be feasible, if you can convince them it wouldn't have an adverse impact on the public.

It's worth contacting the council about it.

F_T_Buyer

I'd speak to your neighbour first, if's shes happy it will be far easier with the council.

matto

OP is I believe referring to a private right of way rather than a public right of way.

Private rights of way are known as easements and provided you can get the agreement of the neighbour can be altered by way of a deed of variation. I don't think the neighbour can unreasonably refuse. Local council do not need to be involved.

Debt_Free_Chick

whambamboo wrote:

You can apply to your council to stop up or divert a right of way. Generally they seek not to reduce others rights, but diversion might be feasible, if you can convince them it wouldn't have an adverse impact on the public.

It's worth contacting the council about it.

This would work for a Public ROW or Public Footpath. Generally, if you offer an alternative route across your land, this is accepted and the ROW is diverted.

A similar process applies for a private ROW - but the Council is not involved. You only need to involve those who benefit from the ROW according to the deeds (easement).

Ideally, you would agree with the neighbour to divert the ROW, buy the property, execute a new easement - and then the neighbour is selling his/her property with the new ROW already in place (though he/she may need to amend the selling particulars, but not a huge issue).

The main difficulty here is timing. If you don't own the property, you can't amend the easement. If you go ahead with the purchase, but the neighbour completes their sale first - then you need to renegotiate the change in the ROW with the new owner and they might not agree :eek: :mad:

These private ROWs are often not nearly as bad as you might imagine. We have a ROW over our neighbour's drive. Their house fronts the road and our house is, effectively, behind their property. The only way to gain entry to our house is over their land. However, we are under no illusion that this is their land. We do nothing other than use their drive to get to our property (and the easement allows those delivering to or servicing the property the same right).

We do not abuse our "right" by parking on their drive or otherwise inconveniencing them. Ours is a right of access to our property and nothing more. We respect that and I suspect many others in the same situation would do the same.

Now ... if only they would sell us that drive and the attached 8 acres ..... :rotfl:

fivepound

Thx for info, I just wanted to get all things clear in my head as to buy this would be a big gamble for us as it is at the VERY top of our budget at 340K and maybe slightly over. Our house has reached the max in the street now after we have done loads to it and I dont see it growing in line with other houses in better areas so we would just be getting further and further away from a dream house. Im going to try it at 320k and see what happens. If it's meant to be blah blah. I spoke to my AE this morning who knows the house (small village, knows all the houses etc) and he says this is what he would have priced it at (340k). I'd have to have a 200K mortgage though which is scary!

Andy_L

What's in it for your neighbours to agree though - the'd have to walk an extra 4x the length of the garden to take their bins out.

lewolf

Have a good chat to the neighbours first. We had this situation where we once lived in birmingham and found our neighbour twould wander about our garden at night to look for her cats. she also had tradesmen leave large fence panels in our garden for days at a time whilst they completed jobs.

If you don't mind this sort of thing then no problem. In most cases neighbours respect that it is only a right of access and nothing else.

fivepound

Update, offered 320k but rejected out of hand. EA says vendor has 2 buyers waiting to sell there houses who have offered the full asking and the vendor is in no hurry.

benood

Perhaps the EA is telling the truth perhaps not, might be good to let him sweat - others probably aren't going to sell this side of Christmas by which time interest rate rises will have started to kick in. See what the existing neighbour thinks about altering the right of way - now would be the time to make a change before new owners buy it, if you offer to pay legal fees they might jump at a bit of cash to move the right of way.