Overlooking lounges

ANGLICANPAT

A friend owns a semi bungalow .The lounges of his and next doors are adjacent at the back , with full room width patio doors out onto their patios.

20 odd years ago, neighbour built a 10ft extension to his lounge, and put in large picture windows --one in the front of his extension overlooking his own garden, AND one on my friends side , so new huge picture window overlooked my friends patio , and is at right angles to his lounge patio doors , so no privacy at all unless he uses vertical blinds tilted away.

Friends elderly parent , didnt object at the time although didnt realize a window was going in ,and kept quiet after, for sake of friendship. (dont know if PP was sought or not).After death of his parent, my friend used tilted blinds . Original neighbours left and new ones have put nets up.

To cut a story short , friend is now infirm and needs to sell up. The lounge being so closely and thoroughly overlooked, is ,according to EA , going to considerably hamper sales/price. Apart from having to keep blinds well tilted in ones lounge , not many folk would like to sit/sunbathe/entertain on their patio directly in front of a neighbours lounge window .

Question , as this picture window is so invasive of friends bungalows privacy , (maybe 5ft from centre of neighbour window,diagonally to his patio door windows) does it still hold that he (or buyer) could not extend his own lounge because it would block all the light from the overlooking window? Even a fence or potted plants , in fact anything to try and gain privacy , would block the neighours light . Perhaps this wouldnt count as neighbours have a window the other side of the room ?

Is it just a matter of 'its just too late , it is what it is' or is there anything he or future owner can do ? ( Neighbour likes the extra light window brings)

dacouch

Put a fence up

booksurr

20 years later means planning permission is irrelevant

that said your friend is within his rights to erect a fence which, seeing as it is in his back garden, will not require planning permission provided it is less than 2 metres high. Obviously that will totally screen him from being over looked and is the most sensible solution.

Just make sure you establish who is responsible for that boundary line and if unsure erect the fence inside on friend's land not on the actual boundary line itself then the neighbour can do nothing at all about it even if it does "reduce" his light. By the sounds of it the new neighbours aren't too happy with being over looked themselves anyway since it is as bad for them as it is for your friend - hence the nets?

http://www.planningportal.gov.uk/permission/commonprojects/fenceswallsgates/

jc808

who owns the wall the window is in?

you, the neighbour or both ie a party wall?

or as dacouch says put a fence up

Old_Git

put a fence up or ask the neighbours to brick it up ,offer to pay half the costs if need be

EverGreen_2

The fence may solve the Overlooking issue, at leat partially.
I was interested in this house:
http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-46388845.html?premiumA=true


Look at pics #20 & #3 that show the erected fence between the two lounges. However, the "over looking" is still there. Very good house, very good area and neighbourhood. Imagine you pay that big money in this house but you don't get privacy in your front yard....and backyards of both houses are overlooked from 1st and 2nd floor. Nothing is perfect.

moneyistooshorttomention

dacouch wrote: »

Put a fence up

My views precisely.

I am surprised this neighbour got planning permission for that window there, as I didn't think ones like that were allowed. But I'm guessing that it wouldn't be possible to inform the "authorities" now that so many years have passed?

But I would certainly put a fence up. Make it an attractive type one and I wouldn't have thought it would be possible to even see that there is a neighbours window beyond. Maybe a mature (small type) tree or too in the garden by that fence too?

Its the neighbours' lookout that they wont be able to sit there and "invade privacy" any longer by looking out onto someone else's garden like that, so just ignore their inevitable complaints about having a fence going across only a couple of feet in front of that window.

Jaguar_Skills

Do not just put a fence up if it blocks the window owned by your neighbour. After 19 years and one day that property will have acquired a right to light through it. If you block it up you could be liable to compen sate the owner for the loss of light (if it falls below a certain level)

Johnandabby

But isn't it the person not the property that acquires right to light? So if someone new moved in, as the OP says, then the 20 year count starts again from 0.

Doozergirl

Jaguar_Skills wrote: »

Do not just put a fence up if it blocks the window owned by your neighbour. After 19 years and one day that property will have acquired a right to light through it. If you block it up you could be liable to compen sate the owner for the loss of light (if it falls below a certain level)

With a large picture window at the back of the house, I doubt that the light will be reduced enough into the room.

Planners don't usually pay any attention to side windows. I know that planning aren't involved in this case, but they wouldn't count it for right of light unless it were the only window to a living room.

Don't the neighbours have their own problems with privacy? In the same way that one lounge is overlooked, so is the other. It can't be the most valuable window.

A few months of naked aerobics in thegarden before erecting the fence would help reduce the liklihood of complaint.

Even if the present owner had to compensate the neighbour, it might be less than the impact on the house price. Did the neighbouring house price suffer when it was sold?

moneyistooshorttomention

Johnandabby wrote: »

But isn't it the person not the property that acquires right to light? So if someone new moved in, as the OP says, then the 20 year count starts again from 0.

Worth checking which it is...but the new neighbours may not have the nerve to carry on the visual intrusion and mightn't claim it even if they could (there are some decent people around after all).

I know there is a rule about easements (ie strangers having rights of some description over someone else's property) that goes "If a house has had whatever-it-is for over 20 years then the house might have acquired a prescriptive right/easement for what the house itself needs (ie any owner of the property)". However, if the particular owner of the house trying to make a claim just wants something because they personally WANT it, whereas the house itself doesn't NEED it (ie other owners of the house wouldn't HAVE to have whatever-it-is in order to live there) then they cant get those prescriptive rights.

That's basically the legal position in plain English, as I understand it to be.

From this, I would say that the house itself NEEDS the window-that-it-ought-to-have to that lounge, but it's the previous owners personally who WANTED to have the intrusive window as well. My guess would therefore be fwiw that no owner of house-with-intrusive-window (either past or present one) could claim a "right to light" from the intrusive window. This because the okay window would probably provide sufficient light.

Just my take on it fwiw.

EDIT; As well for OP to sort this situation out clearly before selling the house, as, if new next-door neighbours were able to "get awkward" about this and decided to do so and, as a result, the fence came down, then we might be into "Misrepresentation". I don't think its very likely personally, but, if someone bought this house knowing there was no visual intrusion from neighbour (ie because fence had gone up okay) and then found neighbour was able to get the fence removed, then the house would have been "misrepresented" as having more privacy than it actually did/sold for higher price than it was worth minus that privacy.

Misrepresentation can, as I understand it, cause a buyer to be able to come back on the seller up to 15 years later for compensation and that compensation can go as far as forcing the vendor to buy the house back again.

CONCLUSION = I'd still put that fence up and then wait a while to see if next door neighbours "kicked up" about it and, if they did, I'd investigate at that point if they had managed to acquire a "right to light" from intrusive window (though my feeling is they probably wont have).