Neighbour's house in disrepair

73Jonathan123

I live in a semi detached. The two cottages used to be 4 and is now 2. Mine is 3 of them. The roof space is divided into two. One half I share with my neighbour. My neighbour does not maintain his cottage which he uses as a holiday cottage. He used to come up once a month during the summer for a night but the last year he only comes up very occassionally and does not even spend the night, just strims some of his weeds. We have not seen him for over a year now.

His cottage is in very bad repair, missing gutters, rotten windows and so on but it's the gable end which particularly concerns me. We know he asked a builder about taking his chimney down ( which is at a jaunty angle ) but the builder was not keen because of the crack in his gable end. Now I know these cottages have lasted about a 100 years so far but worry that his chimney will come down or his gable end will start to go. We have no way of contacting them.

Is there anything we can do? ( Also they have no letter box so no way to leave a message )
I would like to understand how bad it is and if we can make them do anything about it. If their chimney came down in the winter our attic would be exposed.

Thanks

iamcornholio

Councils have powers to deal with dangerous buildings, and other disrepair which may be causing a nuisance

Either the building regulations dept, or the environmental health dept

dragonsoul

i know little about this subject, but my gut instinct is to get your insurance company involved asap, this way if the worst happens you have back-up

DVardysShadow

dragonsoul wrote: »

i know little about this subject, but my gut instinct is to get your insurance company involved asap, this way if the worst happens you have back-up

Alternatively, they might drop you like a hot brick, which then leaves you having to declare forever that you were refused insurance. Think hard before going off down this road.

Gloomendoom

DVardysShadow wrote: »

Alternatively, they might drop you like a hot brick, which then leaves you having to declare forever that you were refused insurance. Think hard before going off down this road.

Ditto

Think very hard. I speak from experience.