Maintenance on land, owner not known

allworknocash

At the end of our garden is a strip of waste land, when the house was built trees were planted as part of the build. We have lived here for 11 years and nobody has maintained the land apart from us. When the estate was built the whole area belonged to a company which went under and vanished which is why the land was not maintained. We have done our best to tame the wild but now the trees are massive and need some attention. I asked a company to trim them but they won't without the owners permission.


How do I find out who owns the land if anybody? I don't want to spend a lot as it's not really our problem, however, if the land can be claimed then I'm happy to do whatever is necessary. None of the neighbours know as I'm the only original owner still left in the row which the land adjoins.


Our previous neighbour tried to buy the land behind him from the company before it disappeared only to be told that there was no land behind us as far as they knew.


Any advice?

G_M

do a map enquiry at the Land Registry here.

Read about 'adverse possession' here.

Mallotum_X

fence it off and get a tree guy to cut them back once they appear to be In your garden.

Davesnave

Reading between the lines, I'd guess the trees are blocking the light to your garden.

I'd agree with incorporating them into the garden as a first step towards gaining control, but only if they have not been given protected status.

Some people in my local town have trees which annoy them in this way, but the hedge was there before the houses and all the trees have TPOs on them. They are able to get maintenance but not removal, so 'owning' them in that kind of situation would not confer any advantage at all.

Land_Registry

If the land formed part of the original development and was retained by the developer then it's ownership may remain with them
If they then ceased training for example on liquidation then the land could then pass to the crown.

Identifying the true legal owner comes down to your own detective work and it is important to establish whether the land is registered or not as posted by G_M.

How you approach claiming the land will depend on whether the land is registered or not.

allworknocash

Thanks for all the suggestions, I've looked at the link which identifies my property but not the land behind. The trees are blocking the light which is one of the reasons to trim them down. Regarding fencing the land off, it's so overgrown behind next door that nobody can get to it anyway, I put a gate in years ago which now leads nowhere!

It looks like my only option is to stump up the money to land registry to search the registration details, it's a shame they don't do a cheaper service to confirm whether it's registered or not so you can proceed with full searches only if necessary.

I may let it lie for another year or 2 then start looking into it properly.

princeofpounds

Don't let it lie. If the land is abandoned you probably do want to attempt adverse possession, if for no other reason than eventually you will be able to control the land and sort out any problems.


Adding another two years on an already protracted process means it would just take forever.

Land_Registry

allworknocash wrote: »

It looks like my only option is to stump up the money to land registry to search the registration details, it's a shame they don't do a cheaper service to confirm whether it's registered or not so you can proceed with full searches only if necessary.

The online service G_M linked you to above is £3 to view/download the information online or to do a postal search to see if the land is registered for £4

There are more expensive search services out there but these are operated by third party provider sites and not the GOV.UK one

allworknocash

Ok, I'll have another look. I got the impression it only found property titles with postal addresses.

allworknocash

What an awful website, not really compatible with android devices, won't work properly with touchscreen windows. Plugged in the mouse, found what I wanted, registered account, paid, unexpected error!!!


Log in on windows laptop, find correct page to retry download, input transaction ID and click try again, get ignored and redirected to enquiry home page...again...and again...and again.


Go to customer service pages (ha ha) and try to use forum to sort it only to find out you have to register with a completely unknown 3rd party website to use it.


Eventually find the direct contact page to submit my enquiry, I guess 24hr service refers to the time it takes to receive the instant download you have just purchased.


I just hope that the documents I'm fighting to get are the right ones, in the vicinity of my search position it showed 3 options, my house, next door and a title described as 'land'.
I assume that this means its registered and the documents are called title register and title plan. Shame I couldn't see which area this relates to before paying though.

Land_Registry

allworknocash - sorry you had such a bad experience with the website and service.
Unfortunately the service does have failings on certain devices but we are hoping to introduce a new service in the coming months which improves this aspect especially on mobile and android devices etc.

In some cases the download fails because of the settings on the person's device or the process has not been completed - the latter aspect will again hopefully improve with the new service.

The forum has proved relatively successful in handling customer enquiries simply because customers are able to search and identify similar threads and posts to find answers (same as MSE in many ways). You don't have to register to search and view but I appreciate that if you wish to ask a question then you do need to.

Hopefully you have managed to select the correct piece of information and much depends on the land being large enough to provide a single result. If the area is small or you select the part near other properties then you can find that it provides more than a single search result but it should present one as a direct hit and the others as possibles. I admit though it is not ideal for land enquiries.

I think I have tracked down you enquiry in our systems so will email a reply to that as well. Let me know if you don't get a reply