Unadopted road not discovered in local search

MMouse1972

Hi,

We bought our house in December (2011) and the Local searches came back showing the house was on a public highway maintainable at public expense. The solicitors also confirmed it was an adopted road maintainable by the local authority, as we question why there was a sign showing 'residents only' on entry into the road.

We wrote to the local authority (Jan 2012) and asked for a pot hole to be repaired. The LA have informed us that the road is a public highway maintainable at private expense and we need to contact the landowner about repairs.

We raised this issue with our solicitors and we are awaiting for them to return our call.....

Has anyone been in the same position? We would not have bought the house if the searches and solicitors had informed us it was on a private road maintainable at private expense. Is there anything we can do?

Many thanks

Doozergirl

The Local Search should be underwritten by insurance. If the information is wrong, then it's the problem of the people that produced the search - probably your new LA.

I don't know what happens from this point, but it sounds like someone has liability.

2sides2everystory

What sort of development is it where you live? Is it some kind of estate built by a developer in the last 20 years for example? Clearly it has been organised well enough by someone for the "Residents Only" signs to have been erected if not so organised as to repair a pothole ...

Your solicitor will have been very foolish if they did not properly investigate after you put them on enquiry.

If it is a private estate of some description then the developer will have set up some kind of structure for short medium and long-term management and expenditure on things like roads and streetlighting (and until October last year, drains).

It is just possible of course that if you are in a nice areas and a management company exists and is well run that there may be some value in living in an unadopted road as opposed to a public highway.

I assume you own a freehold on your house? Or is it a lease? There may be some kind of annual service charge in either case actually. No hint of that yet though ?

DVardysShadow

MMouse1972 wrote: »

We raised this issue with our solicitors and we are awaiting for them to return our call.....

If they were told wrongly by the Local Authority, the solicitor will let you know. If the solicitor made a mistake, they will probably blank you with a response that they are unable to assist you in this matter and you should seek further legal advice. This will be a condition of their professional indemnity insurance.

MMouse1972

Hi - thanks for your help.

The house is a single detached property built 30 years ago in the back of another property's garden. Our house is registered as a separate piece of land from the original land. Our house faces onto the road which needs to be privately maintained. The road has a dozen semi's on the opposite built around 1930's and there are two newer semis on the same side of us.

There was no mention from our solicitor about service charges, short or medium management charges or even a name of a developer.... We are freehold with with a mortgage.

Can we 'get out' of the house and mortgage as we would not have bought the house due to it being on a private road?

2sides2everystory

MMouse1972 wrote: »

Can we 'get out' of the house and mortgage as we would not have bought the house due to it being on a private road?

Well it's not the most common request we see in the forums but there might always be a first time

Seriously, you first need to find out (perhaps by talking to the neighbours) to see how they think it works. If the road has been there since the 1930s then I imagine that one or two potholes will have needed repair previously.

It might first be best to speak with the neighbours who own the two semis on your side which it seems are also "additional" properties built since the others were first built.

You might also be able to discover who the landowner actually is from the Land Registry if it is not specified in your own deeds. If the road is privately owned then some form of rights of access across it will have been registered with your title and that should yield the name of the landowner at the time your house was built, and maybe will show the title number which you have a right of access / easement rights over. With the title number you could get a copy of the current title (of the road) from the land registry website for about four quid I think.

A starting point for any compensation due to you through negligence of your solicitor (if you can actually prove it and see it prosecuted!) I imagine will largely be limited to some accumulative notion of how much a year it might cost to contribute to a reserve fund with your neighbours in order to maintain the road. I wouldn't dream any plans of abandoning ship just yet

Does your road have streetlighting? If the road really is private then someone other than the local authority must pay for the electricity.

If you do need to commence a legal offensive against some negligent party, then I don't know if your home insurance legal expenses section might come in useful (assuming you have such in your policy).

DVardysShadow

MMouse1972 wrote: »

Hi - thanks for your help.

The house is a single detached property built 30 years ago in the back of another property's garden. Our house is registered as a separate piece of land from the original land. Our house faces onto the road which needs to be privately maintained. The road has a dozen semi's on the opposite built around 1930's and there are two newer semis on the same side of us.

There was no mention from our solicitor about service charges, short or medium management charges or even a name of a developer.... We are freehold with with a mortgage.

Can we 'get out' of the house and mortgage as we would not have bought the house due to it being on a private road?

Is the address of the house in the unadopted road?

You would be foolish to walk away from the house and the mortgage - the damage to your credit record would keep you out of the property market for a very long time. Better to think of the mortgage lender as a potential ally who has also potentially lost out because of this mistake.

You should look for compensation instead.

Sugared-frog

The street lighting might not give a clear indication of who is responsible for maintaining it. We "own" part of a private road and yet the council pays for the street lighting - though they haven't upgraded the lights when they upgraded the near by ones. They have fixed the light each time it has had a problem. And last year they came and fixed a pot hole in a stretch of pavement. When I queried what the men were digging in the private road they said they were council workers fixing a reported pothole.

I know from our deeds that we are responsible for maintaining that part of the road. This is just my experiences of owning a private part of a road.

MMouse1972

Thanks for the information/views.

Do I need to tell my mortgage company?

MMouse1972

Thanks for your response.

I understand that we have to prove that we have had incurred costs to make a claim, but as the road is not maintained by anyone and there is no yearly maintenance charge we are not out-of-pocket. So it appears we can not claim for anything.

Looks like a case of buyer beware.

Zombies

I live on a similar unadopted road

doesnt bother me

I have had to pay for some worn items on the car but thats the way it is

you must have known by the look of the road in the first place