Buying a house with a private and unaccessible Right of Way

AWheatley

Hi,

I'm presently purchasing a property which has a slight oddity with a right of way.

The property is semi detached and has a normal driveway to the right side of the house. There's a fence bordering that driveway, marking the edge of the boundary.

The other side of this fence is a private driveway running down the whole length of the property, for access to 3 properties to the rear.

It all looks normal, the fence is continuous.

However, if you look at the deeds there's a square of land in the back garden against the fence that the owners of the driveway technically have a Right of Way over.

This comes about because this piece of land used to belong to the driveway (it was a bin collection point). It was effectively a small square halfway along the back garden so the owners of the property could have their bins collected from the driveway.
It was however transferred in ownership years ago to the property I'm buying to make the garden a conventional shape, the bins now being collected from the front as per normal.

The square was transferred in ownership but the right of way was never dissolved.

The owners of the driveway would have no reason to access this square, it's literally a 4sq mtr area of nothing, and at the moment they cannot access it because there is (and has been for 10 years) a fence stopping access.

From what I've read about RoWs even if they could access it there would be no point as they'd not be allowed to linger, damage, use the area or do anything other than walk into the garden, turn around and walk out.
It's purely a mistake to have left it in and serves no purpose.

How easy is it to get this Right of Way removed? How much would it likely cost?
Or, is there any point?


Incidentally, one thing I have been told is that I have no RoW to the driveway to get to the other side of the fence.
I cant understand this however as to use that as a bin pickup point when it was under ownership of the property, surely I would have had a RoW to it. Also, surely the bin men would have had access and in fact they must do now to go down and collect the bins from the other 3 houses....

Cheers

Alex

chris_m

AWheatley wrote: »

How easy is it to get this Right of Way removed? How much would it likely cost?
Or, is there any point?

As you say, there is no reason to access that piece of land so, unless it's only a small cost, probably not worth bothering.

Incidentally, one thing I have been told is that I have no RoW to the driveway to get to the other side of the fence.
I cant understand this however as to use that as a bin pickup point when it was under ownership of the property, surely I would have had a RoW to it.

Your property may have only had a RoW to access the bin area from within your property's garden, i.e. not via the driveway. Or, maybe, your bins were collected from the end of your driveway.

Also, surely the bin men would have had access and in fact they must do now to go down and collect the bins from the other 3 houses....

Tradesmen having business on a property don't need an RoW because they are only accessing the land for the benefit of the owner.
Can you imagine the hassle if an RoW had to be created for the vast majority of houses simply to allow the postman to walk from the front gate to the front door to deliver mail? Then those RoWs would have to be updated every time a new courier service started in the area?

moneyistooshorttomention

I'll hazard a guess that when those 3 houses sold their bit of land to your house (leastways I presume it was bought off them?) that it was thought the, then, owner of your house would put up a wall, rather than a fence?

When the previous owner put up a fence, then I guess those 3 households just thought "Well...that's down to them and their decision to put up something they would have no way of maintaining from the other side. Shoulda done a wall".

I know one of the reasons I am about to replace one of my fences with a wall instead is because I can perfectly well get at the other side of my boundary now. However, if there came a point in the future where the owner of that land didn't want me to, then I wouldn't be able to maintain the other side of a fence.

The road I'm in isn't a public ROW. Tradesmen access it, but only to serve OUR purposes and we're all wondering why if anyone comes into our road for a reason that isn't to do with US.

moneyistooshorttomention

Of course, the other possibility I guess is that this fence belongs to those 3 houses and not to your proposed property at all. With that, they would need to maintain access in order to maintain the other side of their fence.

Browntoa

Other side of the coin as you can never make allowances for some people

Next door neighbour owns the ROW to 2 bungalows at the end of a drive

Over the years one of the bungalow owners has

Tried to stop builders rightfully accessing the drive even though they had the ROW owners permission to do so

Had a fight with a neighbour on the other side of the drive and got arrested

Complained that the neighbour who he had the fight with had built his garage over the sewers causing the ROW owner to have to spend loads getting specialist surveyors to prove otherwise

Forced the ROW owner to lower the height of a wall he had built on his front garden as he claimed to the council he couldn't see when he drove out the drive

And so on

Everything may be ok now but I would get agreement from all parties that they agree they have no claim to the scrap of land

anselld

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

I'll hazard a guess that when those 3 houses sold their bit of land to your house (leastways I presume it was bought off them?) that it was thought the, then, owner of your house would put up a wall, rather than a fence?

When the previous owner put up a fence, then I guess those 3 households just thought "Well...that's down to them and their decision to put up something they would have no way of maintaining from the other side. Shoulda done a wall".

I know one of the reasons I am about to replace one of my fences with a wall instead is because I can perfectly well get at the other side of my boundary now. However, if there came a point in the future where the owner of that land didn't want me to, then I wouldn't be able to maintain the other side of a fence.

The road I'm in isn't a public ROW. Tradesmen access it, but only to serve OUR purposes and we're all wondering why if anyone comes into our road for a reason that isn't to do with US.

Not an issue.
The Access to Neighbouring Land Act 1992 gives the right of access to maintain fences.

moneyistooshorttomention

anselld wrote: »

Not an issue.
The Access to Neighbouring Land Act 1992 gives the right of access to maintain fences.

This is, of course, the legal position. Personally, and I suspect many people would feel the same, I don't want to force a neighbour to let me onto their land against their will just because I had the legal right to do so. On the other hand, I don't want someone else on my land against my will just because they have the legal right to.

I'll admit to being a bit surprised to find someone else's workman in my garden at intervals doing some maintenance work for them. Fortunately, we get on okay, so I'm saying nothing about it, but I was surprised not to be asked if that was okay in advance. Some people would have fallen out about that and would be entitled to be upset, but the neighbour concerned and I personally have a "swop favours with each other" attitude in most respects.

No point in OP risking conflict with neighbours if it turned out there wasn't going to be a mutual favour-swopping context. You never know what the neighbours would be like and I've done maintenance work on my last house before now that involved access to neighbours' territory in between owners, rather than having to ask a neighbour for permission and either do without the work or legally force access if they didn't agree.

Also back in my last house I refused access to another neighbour for maintenance work (as they had been awkward to me previously when one of their tradesmen did some damage) and, fortunately, they didn't push that legal right (even though they knew it existed). I wasn't going to take the risk of further damage from one of their people, as they hadn't reimbursed me for the previous lot.

AWheatley

The fence is definately ours (or will be).

TBH I dont think that that maintaining it should be a problem, apparently there's been no conflicts with the current owners and I see no reason why there would be.

Ideally it would be nice to get RoW down the drive as I could then put a side gate in and/or build a garage in the garden and get rear access as we're looking at building on the side and blocking the existing rear access, however that's something I'd have to try my luck with the current owners.

I think when the land was transferred over (no money, it was a case of our property got the square and the drive took a slither our land so the drive was made wider) people just forgot about the RoW and therefore put the fence up.

I don't think it's going to be an issue, but I'm thinking worst case. Somebody could technically force us to put a gate in that we wouldn't be allowed to use, then walk in and out of our garden repeatedly, but not stop or linger.... But surely nobody would do that.

As for the drive, there's another clause in the deeds about the front, there is a sight line and we're not allowed to have a fence/wall at the very front over 1m or something, so they can see along the road and pull out.

I think a builder bought our house-to-be AND built the rear properties and changed it all about so it made more sense.

I don't think the issue will stop us.

chris_m

AWheatley wrote: »

I don't think it's going to be an issue, but I'm thinking worst case. Somebody could technically force us to put a gate in that we wouldn't be allowed to use, then walk in and out of our garden repeatedly, but not stop or linger.... But surely nobody would do that.

Not if you put something undesirable there, like the compost heap

As for the drive, there's another clause in the deeds about the front, there is a sight line and we're not allowed to have a fence/wall at the very front over 1m or something, so they can see along the road and pull out.

A very sensible clause IMO - and one which I believe some councils.use in determining whether or not to grant someone a dropped kerb so they can have a driveway.

G_M

I really don't see the issue.

It's your land - no one can do anything on it. As you say yourself, if they enforce their ROW all they ca do is walk on then walk off - witout causing damage
a) not likely to happen
b) if they did, so what?

Fence maintenance? No different to any other fence on a boundary between 2 properties.

Ignore th issue.

anselld

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

This is, of course, the legal position. Personally, and I suspect many people would feel the same, I don't want to force a neighbour to let me onto their land against their will just because I had the legal right to do so. On the other hand, I don't want someone else on my land against my will just because they have the legal right to.

Why would anyone in their right mind deny access for a simple maintenance task? If neighbours want to make an issue to that extent then they will find something else anyway. There is point tip-toeing around something which is already fully supported in law.