what to do about leylandii in neighbours garden blocking sun?

mrs_baggins

just been reading all the paperwork the council has about complaints re high hedges. the info is from booklets punlished by office of the deputy prime minister and i guess you can see them on the net. it encourages people to talk to their neighbours face to face being clear about exactly what you think you want. explain to your neighbour fully and also put yourself in their place for a different viewpoint, if your neighbour wont talk then get help from independant mediators,, then find out whats best for both of you. If none of this works then the council can be involved but they expect you to have gone through these steps first and can refuse to do anyting if they think you havent tried so far. the website for these is https://www.odpm.gov.uk

mrs_baggins

just asked one of my colleagues who deals with this in my council. This will obviosly depend on each council but mine would charge about £300 and they require this at the very outset without any investgation on their part. If it turns out that a notice has to be served then this will stay on the records of the relevant house for the life of the hedge. So when the house is sold a search will indicate there has been some problem. May be the decinding factor on whether to do something or not.

Babylonian_2

I would say just ask first - they may well be quite amenable - we would have been to such a request from our new neighbour - but the day before we moved in they took a chainsaw to all our bushes along the boundary fence - which were well within the legal limit anyway...

Alison_B

When we moved into our property 10 years ago, the house next door was council owned. The woman had Laylandi in her garden - a whole row of them. The blocked out our light completely and were right up against the fence. When it was windy they used to bend and go right over our garage roof. Once they nearly bent so far over that they nearly touched our bedroom window. I contacted the council about this and they came out within a few days and ended up removing all the Laylandi. We were never billed for this.

Morty_007

Hi all, thanks for the loads of great advice and reference pages.

I wouldn't dream of chopping it down without asking them, in fact, I don't want it chopped down at all, I just want it cut back a little. It appears to have grown about 4 ft up and around since we moved in, and as I explained at first, it now blocks most of the sun from the garden.

I was going to write a letter because they live on the street behind us and not next door so kinda hard to strike up a casual neighbourly friendship without spending a lot of time hanging around their street...which I don't have! I might see what happens by knocking on their door and having a chat but I have to say, putting myself in that position, I'd rather receive a polite letter which I could read and digest than some stranger knocking on my door...maybe thats just me. I think it would be too easy for the person to get defensive if you just turned up out of the blue. I will rethink this though and maybe my DH and I will go around with a bottle of wine (and hope they're not alcoholics!) to talk to them.

Whilst I appreciate most of the suggestions here, I find the suggestion that "if it was there when you moved in then you cannot expect your neighbour to take it out just because you dont like it because you knew it was there when you bought the property." so basically TOUGH, a little unkind.
First up, if it was just that I didn't like it, I wouldn't be asking them to cut it back. It is affecting my property. I'm sorry that when I viewed the house twice, I did so at night and there was no sun out...

If I bought a house which had a dog living next door and when we moved in we found it barked constantly on the weekend and at night, would I be expected to live with it? No, I'd be able to speak to them and if they wouldn't do anything, I could have environmental health around to assess the noise level and they would ask the owner to do something about it. Same if I moved into a house next door to someone who played the drums till all hours...It's noise pollution in the sme way as I believe this is light pollution.

Thanks ever so much to those who looked up the legislation for me. I really don't expect it to get that far, the legal questions were just so I am for armed incase it goes pear shaped. I have no intention of that being my first port of call. And thanks for the advice about having to disclose when you sell, it's a good point!

And as for putting myself in their shoes and see how it feels from a different standpoint...I'd be mortified if I thought that a tree on my property was stealing light from someone elses and would have it cut back to a point where it wasn't intrusive. maybe thats just me too?

Thanks everyone, i'll have a think and see where we go from here.

Regards
Morty

sandieb

It could well be that they are elderly and unable to trim it back themselves in which case they might be grateful for your help. And, elderly or not, they might also be completely unaware of the tree's impact on your garden.

Good luck and keep us informed!

elinder2

:eek: Do hope it's not me who lives behind you! Have just had guy out to quote for removal of 30 foot(ish) leylandii (in Crewe) after literally years of arguments with my hubby over this beast. Now I have decided, once its out what can he do (apart from plant another!) I even suggested to the people behind us that they write to the council to complain and that might force my husband's hand but they never did. Do the council send letters to husbands whose wives complain about leylandii? Seriously...it might be a similar situation with your neighbours ...maybe they just never 'got round to it'.

Morty_007

LOL, don't think it's your tree. To block out light from where you are, it would have to be about a 3 mile high and I can't help thinking that even the local council might object to that!!

Morty_007

Bit of an update:

It seems that the tree has lost a couple of feet in the last couple of days (Been raining for about a week so don't know when exactly!)...not sure if they lopped it or if it had damage done to it in the high winds we have had or if the wood pigeons nesting in it have broken something (they make an awful racket flapping about pecking each other sometimes) but its deffinately a couple of feet shorter which allows sun flooding into our garden!!

Hurrah, no rocked boats, no problem

MonkeySaving?

Cut it down and blame it on the wind
Or a sure fire way, drill an approx. 1cm hole into the center of the tree, fill it with Ammonium Sulphamate and close it off..voila dead leylandi. Works every time