Convention for fence/boundary ownership / maintenance

vuvuzela

Hi all, just thought I would ask this - my house is a mid terrace. Looking out from my front door over the garden towards the road, which side is conventionally the one I maintain ? (there are wooden fences on both sides and the previous owner had no idea (or didn't want to say...)).
There's not a problem or any issues, just thought I would see if I can make it clear in my own mind. I would ask the owners of the adjoining houses, but they're both rented and owners don't live there. I will obviously check the land registry to get their addresses if necessary to ask them.
Cheers for any advice

lincroft1710

Standing on the pavement looking toward the house it is the left hand fence, that is "supposed" to "belong" to that house. But this is not set in stone and your deeds may say otherwise.

Old deeds used to indicate boundary ownership by a "T" inside boundaries on plans.

princeofpounds

There is no convention in reality. May be indicated by thing as various as text in your deeds, a T on the deed plan, the history of the fence, the physical placement of the fence and so on.

vuvuzela

Cheers both. Will check what the solicitor sent to us and see if it is useful. My memory of when we received them was that there were no T on them, was standard land registry plans and not old deeds.

AFK_Matrix

I hope you don't mind me asking a quick question vuvuzela, but I am going to want to replace the fence I own on the house I have purchased as it is falling down. But I would also like to replace the other fence as this is in a state as well. The other fence is owned by a landlord so I was going to contact them and ask if they would go halves, now is this the thing to do or just say I will pay for all of the fence to be replaced? Not sure quite what to approach the landlord with.

cattie

There is no 'convention' with regards to fences, you either look at the deeds to find out which fence is your responsibility, or on the seller's info pack from when you bought the house. Sometimes, responsibility is completely unknown & one owner or another may assume responsibility or both neighbours share responsibility.

No property owner has a legal requirement to maintain fences if they do not wish to do so, so if a shared or neighbouring fence needs repair or replacement & the owner doesn't want to carry out or pay towards any work, there is nothing you can do about it, other than asking them if they object to you paying for & having the work done if you can't live with it as it is.

sirmosh

You can put your own fence up on your side of the boundary even if the existing fence is owned by your neighbour. Just make sure you don't leave much of a gap or when they remove their fence they could gain a bit of your land which overtime will be forgotten about.

G_M

lincroft1710 wrote: »

Standing on the pavement looking toward the house it is the left hand fence, that is "supposed" to "belong" to that house. But this is not set in stone and your deeds may say otherwise.

Old deeds used to indicate boundary ownership by a "T" inside boundaries on plans.

Most of the responses to this query have been helpful. This one is rubbish! It is an old wives tale and should be ignored.

1) look at the Title Deed and Title Plan
2) look at info provided by previous owner
3) check all other properties in the road - Usually (again, not always!) in any given street (esp a 'development') ownership of fence is the same for all properties, so if all the other owners maintain the fence on the right there's a good chance you should too
4) check which side of the fence the fence posts are (post is typically on the owners side). Bear in mind not everyone knows this so a fence may have been erected the other way round! Check all the other fences in the street - as 3 above, if posts are all on same side except yours, perhaps previous owner just put the fence up wrong!

nomoneytoday

IMHO the person responsible for a fence is the person who cares.

If a neighbour doesn't want to fix "their" fence, then the only fix will be to do it yourself

lincroft1710

G_M wrote: »

Most of the responses to this query have been helpful. This one is rubbish! It is an old wives tale and should be ignored.

No it is not rubbish. If you read the OP's first post and carefully read my post, you would see exactly what question was asked and how I replied stating what was commonly believed may not be the case and how ownership of boundaries was shown on old title deeds.

vuvuzela

Thanks all for the replies. Will check the side of the posts and ask people if I can contact them. As I said, there's no issues as yet, just wanting to be clear in my own mind in case anything does happen.