Advice for dealing with neighbours over fence??

Stennent

Hi all, hoping for a little advice please and thought this might be the best place.......background to story is that basically when we moved in 18 months ago the fence between ourselves and our neighbours (they had recently moved in as well) was in a bad way. Most of the panels came down in October 2011 during some bad weather and the rest came down in December (again with the weather). At the time the neighbours said they would be happy to help pay for new fencing. Fast forward to present and we finally have money together to start thinking about getting it replaced. We went and spoke to them last night and they said they are not willing to pay towards it as it says in their deeds they are only responsible for the fence on the opposite side of their garden, and the boundary fence was our responsibility.....fair enough. But we have checked our deeds and they clearly say that any boundary walls or fences are the responisibility of both parties and should be maintained at equal expense to both property owners.

So.......any advice on how to approach this tactfully, obviously we don't want to cause tension, but equally we don't want to fork out for the whole things ourselves if we don't have to?

Any thoughts would be greatly welcome!! Thanks!

SailorSam

This may help you with the legal side of things but it's always difficult with neighbours and boundary disputes. As hard as it is you need to try and get them to be reasonable.http://www.gardenlaw.co.uk/boundaries.html

mrbadexample

This happened to me. Somewhat diplomatically for me, instead of telling the bloke he was talking out of his hat, I took the land registry plans round, stuck them under his nose and said "This seems to show it's a shared boundary, what does it say on yours?"

Then I let him come to his own conclusion that he was wrong.

Davesnave

You can download your neighbours deeds from the Land Registry for a small fee, if it comes to that.

Stennent

Thank you all for your replies.....I think we'll just approach as tactfully as possible at first and suggest that they may have mis-read their deeds and would they like to double-check....see if they decide to admit they are wrong, fingers-crossed!

Thanks again

wellused

The lady over the roads fence blew down, her next door neighbour said that he would pay half but when he found out how much it would cost he soon beat a hasty retreat.

2010

Always difficult because at the end of the day you still have to live next to one another.
Being tactful and diplomatic is a wise opening gambit and possibly pointing out the benefit of a new fence to both parties.

If you have a copy of your deeds maybe printing off a copy of the relevant section and giving it to your neighbours might do the trick.

If all else fails asked them politely to MOVE.

SailorSam

wellused wrote: »

The lady over the roads fence blew down, her next door neighbour said that he would pay half but when he found out how much it would cost he soon beat a hasty retreat.

The neighbours i had in my last house their son broke the fence by using it as a goal when he was playing football, i wouldn't get it fixed 'cos they wouldn't go halves but when they wanted to move they asked me would i take the good fence from the other side and replace it with the broken panels. They reckoned it never made a difference to me 'cos i had one side broken anyway and they wanted theirs to look better for any buyers.
Two guesses what i said.

wellused

That cheek takes some beating and no mistake. I knew someone who was having long running battles with the industrial unit at the rear of his property in an otherwise quiet village. One afternoon on returning from work he noticed that his fence had a large hole in it, he went around to the industrial unit and kicked up hell. Later on when his son returned he discovered that he had actually kicked a ball through the fence from the garden side. Whoops!

budgetdiyer

There is no obligation to have a fence marking a boundary, so if your neighbours won't contribute you have no option but to pay for it yourself.

I'd be tempted to leave the remenants of the old fence in place, and out your new fence just inside your boundary, leaving them with an eyesore in their garden.

Tippytoes

I'd be inclined to paint their side of your fence luminous green with bright pink spots. They'll maybe learn to love it....in time..