LandLord Sold Garden Which Was Under Tenancy

moneyistooshorttomention

adrihd wrote: »

@moneyistooshorttomention: What was noticeable, that despite the LL telling me I can move all of my plants into pots even after the wall/fence is complete, was that my ENTIRE garden was ransacked of flowers and anything which was decent and of value :-/ As always, nobody knows anything about it. Luckily I have thousants of photos leading up to the day before this all happened. But there's no hard evidence as to where it all went...

I didn't think of the added value... I've got a meeting with a friend this coming weekend who happens to own properties all over the UK, so he'd probably know better than me. So far he agrees that the land is officially mine and that she should have:

1) Given me an 'eviction notice' for that piece of land i.e. the 2 months notice
2) If I refuse, theONLY next step she can take is 'Get an Order of Posession' i.e. just like a normal eviction for a tenant which fails to remove themselves from a property.

@all: I guess the reason why she ignored the law here was because her 'Planning Permission' was due to run out in September. If they don't start building the property by then, then they lose the planning permission totally and have to restart the entire procedure.

@all again: How come planning permission allowed the permission through anyway knowing that there are 4 tenants here with valid contracts which cover that land. I know that I objected and sent a copy of my AsT to them as proof...

Oh dear..so your position is worse than I realised then...due to that rental deposit situation.

Sounds like you could usefully get advice from Shelter maybe on this? (including telling them about this deposit situation).

So it was land grabbing indeed then and the landlady will have doubtless made quite a decent profit thank you for selling off your garden:cool:

Do you have any way of identifying your stolen plants (as it does indeed sound like she has stolen them)? Do you have any idea at all where they went? (eg sold at a carboot sale, put in her own garden, etc) and any means of identifying for sure that they are yours if you can trace them? YOu said you have photos, so I'm wondering how detailed they are and if you've put any identifying markers on any of them? If you can find them and are quite quite sure they are yours, then you are entitled to do what you please to your own plants but BE CAREFUL.

Could you look at ways to scupper her planning permission without putting your tenancy at risk? (it sounds like, if the building process got delayed long enough, then you would at least be able to make her start the whole process again). It may not help you, but it would make you feel a whole lot better at having had this theft happen to you. She may well give you an eviction notice anyway, ie from your flatlet. If she has a scrap of nous she won't want the victim of her crimes still living on the Scene of Crime. I would be prepared for that if I were you. I disagree with tenants "standing on their legal rights" normally and refusing to budge at the end of a tenancy but, in your case, you would be entirely justified in hanging on in there for as long as you possibly can.

I do have the distinct suspicion that the only reason she hasn't given her "crime victims" their notice so far is that she is hoping you will all "pack your bags and go quietly" and, if this is the case, you might as well "stand on your legal rights" and ensure her planning permission runs out.

Certainly have a good talk with your friend re the "added value" you have likely made by turning this derelict garden into somewhere rather nicer. He may well have some useful thoughts for you on this, eg a compensation figure you could quote to this landlady to go quietly. If he thinks you have given her "added value" of say £20,000, then that would mean £5,000 to each of you 4 tenants.

In your position, I would personally work out what the likely "added value" is that us tenants had made and cost of our stolen plants and divide that figure by 4. You each (ie not just yourself hopefully) go to the landlady and offer to go quietly provided she pays you the money she owes you (your quarter share of the total). With that money due you, you would then have money available to use for deposit, etc, on somewhere else.

adrihd

franklee wrote: »

Planning permission has nothing to do with land ownership. I could put in a planning application for a neighbour's land that I don't even own and this could be granted. I could not build on that land though without buying it or getting the neighbour's permission.

In your case if the AST clearly includes the garden then the garden is yours for the duration of the tenancy. I do not know what the penalty for illegally evicting you from the garden is. Plus there's the damage to your flowers etc.

Can you get an interview with a solicitor that would give you the first half hour free, see if they can suggest if it's worth perusing? Do you have any legal cover that you may have added when you took out say contents insurance?

You could email Tessa's landlord law blog on the off chance you get lucky as she selects the occasional query to blog about and yours is novel.

Bear in mind that if you pursue this you will likely be served notice, to leave. That may well be on the cards anyway after what happened.

Thanks I'll take a look at that blog and see if they find it worthy I've also noticed that the local rag as well as the guardian in general like battles like this. The guardian is where I happened to find out about the Housing Act 88 thing i cited.

In regards to the lawyers etc... which are in the area, I've scouted around and they all seem to only deal with family related matters and criminal, not conveyancing etc... I'll keep looking around the towns nearby then With any luck one of the blods or papers will publish my article and I can use that as an excuse to have a natter with one of the law firms. After all, they like publicity!

@silvercar: As far as she is concerned, the rent stays the same as I'm only renting a 'studio flat' and her definition of studio flat is a flat without a garden :-/ I explained that the living room and bedroom all in one large room make it a bedsit / studio-flat which she seems to not understand. Mind you, then again, this is coming from a woman who is a reflexologist. For someone who believes in unproven medicine, she seems to know alot about the law too :P

@silvercar; They ALL hate it, but they're all too scared of being evicted. I just happen to be the lethal one with a sting in my tail! They've ALL helped me with the garden. THey didn't care to actively work on it, but every single one helped me with seedlings and cuttings.. And above all, I was proud as hell that I turned this 4 property building into a community at last.

@Naf: LOL, sorry had to giggle at your name on here The whole situation is 'Naf' I'm not that fussed about being evicted. My folks live 10 miles up the road and TOTALLY have my back. I'd prefer NOT to though as it'll just disrupt their (as well as my) lives.


@All: The way I'm playing it at the moment is that I'm being 'covert' about it. I've decided to shush, not ay anything more to letting agents. If they contact me, I'll just tell them I'm not interested in arguing about it despite being unhappy so leave it for now.

In the meantime, I'll be digging up all of the legal filth I can on all of this, putting all of my 'fallbacks' into place and packing a few parachutes.

I'm not usually this venomous, but it's all because of how it happened. They spend YEARS egging me on about such a lovey garden and hard work and then this... Two can play at sneaky, mine just happens to be legal :-/

adrihd

@moneyistooshorttomention: *edit removed by OP*

About the planning permission, I've tried EVERY which way, to the point where I sat for WEEKS in my garden until I FINALLY spotted a nightingale nesting in the main tree. I took a MYRIAD of snaps, called up wildlife conservation all excited. Unfortunately, they need a colony of nightingales nesting to enforce. Either way my camera and 400mm zoom lense live at my kitchen window doings it always did, this time on a specific mission

About the actual building, I MIGHT be able to halt that. My neighbour and I found live .22 calibre long rounds (really corroded) in the soil, I mean 20 - 30 of them The police removed them for us and a case was logged. I'm just wondering if I should call the council Healt & Safety and let them know that digging will happen in that area of the garden endangering people? hmm.

I intend to stand my ground. As i say, I dont have much to fall back on, but my parents are sure as dammit gonna help me if the proverbial hits the fan. Worst comes to the worst is that out lives get disrupted for 6 weeks.

£5000 each, plus the time I've lost from the company which I've beenplanning since July last year. Thanks to this and the last few months of hell, it's WELL overdue.. So much for having my own company financial year the same as the tax mans for simplicity.

I think your last paragraph sounds good. But I'm not leaving quietly After all of this agro, she needs to be named and shamed publically as well as the letting agent which are only helping her on a 'quid pro quo' basis at the moment by the looks of things.

On top of that I'll be seeking fines for the pair of them for unfair terms of contract (as the terms aren't transparent), breach of contractual duty i.e. repairs and I'll see to it that the council get the entire property licensed so that they take over the management off of the paid of them.

That should rip them a good one.

Did I say I was venomous?

martinsurrey

people are jumping the gun here.

The first and most important issue is, was the garden part of the tenancy.

To be part of the teanncy, it must be part of the longlease hold for the flat (or freehold if its a house), and the OP hasnt mentioned anything about these.

Do you have the land registry details for the flat/house you rent?

Your tenancy will be for XX, YY road, ZZ street.

The land registry details for this are vital

The title plan and lease will detail what is / isn’t covered by that lease, and as you are a tenant of this lease, what is covered by your tenancy.

As the garden area has been sold, it must now be on a separate title deed from the flats, and if you don’t know when this separation happened you have no idea if the garden area was even included in the flat when you rented it...

You don’t know if the lease states that the garden area is retained by the freeholder to do as they wish...

You may have been using this land as a garden but it may have been a separate plot of land, with poorly defined boundaries, and as such, not covered by your tenancy agreement.
In short, you are assuming a lot of things here and that’s why you need legal advice, but that won’t be free or cheap, as you’ve already kicked up such a fuss I expect the LL to evict you soon enough, so I would focus on finding a way to get another place rather than chase this dead end around.

moneyistooshorttomention

Maybe worth £3 to the Land Registry to check the boundaries then...and mention it IF the garden indeed falls within the boundaries.

If it doesn't fall within the boundaries, then its just £3 wasted and a tiny bit of time. Worth a punt...

adrihd

@martinsurrey: Would the local council or someone have that information? Unfortunately I'm a bit broke until the end of the month so i can't get anything immediately from land registry.

Furthermore surely...

Our building 'no. x Whatever Road' is on a corner and the ONLY entrance to the plot in question is from a side road called 'y'. Until planning permission was granted, an address wasn't assigned to that plot.

The numbers on that side of the road go:

13 15 17 x 19 21

X marks the spot where that plot is and where planning permission granted permission. Adn that road in question runs down the side of the property.

The entrance to our flats (the lower two) is via the side entrance that was removed and moved up 6 foot removing the area where I kept my bins (which as an alcove)

adrihd

I've removed that 'personal comment'

but about the £3, I'll do that on friday. lets hope I buy the right thing LOL! I thought it'd cost alot more than that as I thought planning surveys had to be ordered as prints from the planning offices

It might sound petty but at the moment I feel like spending any penny further on this LL;s injustice is an injustice itself. But seeing as it might just serve justice, it might just be just

LOL.. that's just alotta justs!

martinsurrey

adrihd wrote: »

@martinsurrey: Would the local council or someone have that information? Unfortunately I'm a bit broke until the end of the month so i can't get anything immediately from land registry.

Furthermore surely...

Our building 'no. x Whatever Road' is on a corner and the ONLY entrance to the plot in question is from a side road called 'y'. Until planning permission was granted, an address wasn't assigned to that plot.

The numbers on that side of the road go:

13 15 17 x 19 21

X marks the spot where that plot is and where planning permission granted permission. Adn that road in question runs down the side of the property.

The entrance to our flats (the lower two) is via the side entrance that was removed and moved up 6 foot removing the area where I kept my bins (which as an alcove)

Only available from the land registry, and you may need to buy several items to nail it down, who owns what and when transfers happened.

it does not matter what is on the ground really, what matters is what’s on the deeds/leases,as they are what you rented.

Without a FULL understanding of these, you are just guessing and making blind accusations, neither of which go down well in court, or with the police.

adrihd

@martin: Can I not get a copy of those from the letting agent? Surely they have to somewhere provide evidence that they are actually allowed to let any land at all?

Ofcourse I'll be cross-checking that all of the dates coincide!

As I mentioned, at the moment I'm covertly gathering everything. I know it seems like an unorganised haystack at the moment but I'm literally stockpiling

I've got a nasty habit of being extremely methodical when it comes to anything, so everything will be to the T when I'm done.

adrihd

@all: update: THe Letting Agent called to let me know that the 'builder' mentioned in my OP is coming to do some minor work. I kicked in the 'ball rolling'. I apologised for the uproar, explained this property has been harmonious and I/we wish to keep it that way and that the landlady needn't worry about further disharmony.

Hopfully that sweetened them up, and lets me get on with my info-seeking expedition!

@all: just to add. I do realise that my 'plans' seem a bit to the liking of 'jumping the gun' but a a Project Manager by trade, we first come up with a draft of project end 'expected result'. This is purely what this is And I know plans don't always go ahead as planned, but it's harmless to plan