Need formal easement from council for access to parking

missVN

We are currently in the process of purchasing a house, ready to exchange but we have now been informed that we need to get a formal easement from the local council for access to the off road parking.
The vendors put in gates and a hard standing at the back of the property in 2008. It turns out that they didn't get the correct permissions for this. The council informed them that they were in breach of covenant in constructing the hard standing and had no legal right of way to access the back of the property. The back is accessed down a lane at the end of the row of houses and leads to a group of council owned garages. They were offered the access then at a cost of £7000.
The council threatened legal action and our vendor ignored all correspondence. It appears that the council did not pursue the matter.

We have been advised by our solicitor that we need a formal easement from the council giving access and retrospective deeds permission needs to be obtained for the hard standing.
We advised the vendors that we were only willing to proceed with the purchase if these issues were sorted at their cost. They have refused.

We are now waiting for our mortgage lender to reconsider the valuation of the property now that it doesn't have legal off road parking. We are now looking to renegotiate a lower price for the property and arrange the easement ourselves or pull out of the sale if the vendors will not accept a lower offer.

Just wondered if anyone had any advice or had been through the process of getting an appeasement? We don't want to end up having to go through a long, drawn out, expensive process.

Anyone have any idea how much value off road parking can add?

Thanks

G_M

Well, how much would you be prepared to pay to have the off road parking? That's what it is worth.

Sounds like you fully understand the issues, and the options available to you. What more can we add?

The decision is yours.

booksurr

walk away from the purchase or pay the council what it wants - your choice, nothing more anyone can say as we cannot read your mind!

Lord_Baltimore

See what the Council has to say and decide when you know for sure. You may be being presumptuous about the cost.

davidmcn

The value of off-street parking depends mostly on how restricted on-street parking is in the area, I don't think any of us can give you guidance without knowing where the property is.

Have the council been contacted recently? They won't necessarily still be willing to grant the easement, or at the previous price. And they probably won't deal with it as quickly as you would like.

lincroft1710

If the current owner is presently accessing the hardstanding via the lane and the council never pursued "taking legal action", you could probably continue to do the same.

It may be that the lane is in fact a public right of way and the council cannot stop anybody accessing it.

The above is only an opinion and not a statement of fact.

System

lincroft1710 wrote: »

If the current owner is presently accessing the hardstanding via the lane and the council never pursued "taking legal action", you could probably continue to do the same.

It may be that the lane is in fact a public right of way and the council cannot stop anybody accessing it.

The above is only an opinion and not a statement of fact.

No, but they could fence all the way along it to prevent access to the houses

missVN

The lane is there to access a row of council owned rental garages. It doesn't lead anywhere else. The buyers solicitors have suggested that we enter into a licence agreement with the council at the time of completion (this was also offered to the vendor back in 2008). Our solicitor has advised that this is not permanently legal and can be revoked by the council at anytime, hence why he recommended obtaining the easement.

We are quite clear of our options- walk away or buy and deal with the issue ourselves.
My main reason for posting was to ask if anyone had any experience of anything similar. We don't want to end up in a costly process which takes months/years to resolve.
I am waiting on contact back from the local council.
It may all be taken out of hands anyway as our solicitor has had to inform the lender who now wants to revalue the property. If the decrease our mortgage offer and the vendor won't accept a lower price the we will have to pull out.

Mgman

If you decide to purchase and carry on using the access illegally treat every day as a bonus, as round here the council have demolished many of their blocks of garages and handed the land over to housing associations to build social housing on.

The council may also now be unwilling to grant permanent access rights as it could stop them using it for other purposes in the future such as building on.