Responsibility for retaining wall on boundary - help!

Rushmore

Hi all

Was hoping for opinions/advice on following situation regarding garden boundary responsibility. I’m relatively new at owning a house so please feel free to point out if being stupid.

My neighbour and my gardens are sloped relatively steeply. My garden is 'smooth' whereas at some point in the past my neighbour's has been stepped - there is therefore a specific point where his garden is 3 or 4 ft. lower than mine. Never even thought about it before as both of us have sheds filling this space bordered by hedges and whoever did this did it a long time ago.

Neighbour has just removed the shed on his side with the intention of patching up the fence between us and getting rid of his shed. He's discovered behind it a large piece of corrugated metal held upright with some metal stakes driven into ground. This is holding up the earth beneath my shed. The metal and stakes are about 6 inches further into his garden than the fence line so he would have to remove the metal to put the fence up. Obviously this would need additional support as a fence panel would not hold the earth.

I'm meeting up with him to discuss "what WE need to do about it". Obviously to maintain good feelings I could just pay half of whatever he is suggesting but I was wondering where everyone thought responsibility lies. I'm pretty sure general boundary responsibility is his according to deeds but think this is slightly more complex.

In no particular order, my thoughts:

• The current metal support is well within his garden
• His desire to remove the shed has prompted the upset to the status quo
• We could just leave the metal support in place, it is his desire to put a fence panel in which is creating the problem
• His is the landscaped garden
• If he just digs out the earth and puts a fence panel in, as soon as warmer weather returns my garden will cascade through the fence into his therefore probably making it my problem
• The boundary is his responsibility according to deeds

I expect it’ll come down to paying to keep the goodwill, but I always like to know the correct action at least in principle.

Thanks for any thoughts

Dan-Dan

In general terms , its is the owner of the `higher` land who is responsible for retaining their land, i.e , you

Obviously whatever happened in the past , could have been your neighbours previous owners fault , as in , stepped their garden , then bodging the retaining aspect , but hey ho , what can you do now , suggest you accept half and half if its offered

Rushmore

Thanks Dan-Dan, I didn't know that.

Dan-Dan

Though there is some grey area here if the boundary feature is his responsibility , would suggest you visit garden law for some specific advice from experts

Dan-Dan

http://www.gardenlaw.co.uk/phpBB2/index.php

teneighty

I'm not sure it is a clear cut as that.

I think you have to look at how the retaining wall or change in level has come about.

If the neighbour has lowered their garden by 3 feet or so it is their responsibilty to support the higher ground with a wall on their side of the boundary.

If the neighbour raises their garden they are responsible for preventing the raised ground slipping over the boundary with a wall on their side.

If it is a bit of both to level a sloping site (cut and fill) then the wall is normally on the boundary and shared 50:50

It should be fairly easy to establish the natural slope of the land but from the description I suspect it is the first one. I must confess it is a very long time since I did property law at college and the old memory is a bit fuzzy so I could be completely wrong.

Dan-Dan

teneighty wrote: »

I'm not sure it is a clear cut as that.

I think you have to look at how the retaining wall or change in level has come about.

If the neighbour has lowered their garden by 3 feet or so it is their responsibilty to support the higher ground with a wall on their side of the boundary.

If the neighbour raises their garden they are responsible for preventing the raised ground slipping over the boundary with a wall on their side.

If it is a bit of both to level a sloping site (cut and fill) then the wall is normally on the boundary and shared 50:50

It should be fairly easy to establish the natural slope of the land but from the description I suspect it is the first one. I must confess it is a very long time since I did property law at college and the old memory is a bit fuzzy so I could be completely wrong.

I understand it this way also , think OP might get some joy through adult discussions with neighbour and armed with good knowledge from GL

Rushmore

Thanks for the information folks, very useful. Like you suggest, an adult conversation is the way to sort it.

However... just for arguments sake:

There isn't actually a problem with the current retaining set-up (the metal sheet and poles), it's being changed by choice rather than necessity. Surely that makes it the responsibility of the person wanting to change it?