Unsure over boundary/fence ownership

SailorSam

[Deleted User] wrote:

Hi,
a similar thread here a few days ago.

Maybe they're next door neighbours and both talking about the same fence.

jamei305

Put up whatever fence you want on your own land, if you want to.

If you don't want to put a fence up, then don't. The chances of someone successfully suing you for not erecting a fence are negligible.

eddddy

Sazarina88 wrote: »

Should we ask the fence company to erect the new fence inside the boundary on our side then?

Assuming there are no covenants in your deeds to say otherwise...

You can erect the fence inside your boundary.

Or you can put up no fence at all.

Or you can ask the neighbour if they agree to having the fence on the boundary line (i.e. half on your land and half on theirs).

Or you can both erect fences, each inside your respective boundaries.


If the fence has a 'pretty' side, there is an old convention that owners of fences have the 'pretty' side facing their neighbours - as a courtesy. But increasingly, people are taking the attitude "I paid for it, so I want to see the pretty side".

glasgowdan

If the neighbour is planning to sell then theyshould be very motivated to fix it. I'd leave it unless it was an awkward issue for me, and offer to pay half.

To me it's just bad manners not to offer to share costs. Common decency.

melstar11

Our title register and plan are silent on the ownership and maintenance of the boundaries, but the original conveyance from the builder to the first owner nearly a century ago states that the boundaries and party walls and the joint responsibility of the neighbours either side. As pps have stated, if the title documents are silent the boundaries are usually a joint responsibility.

Robisere

https://www.gov.uk/your-property-boundaries

Plenty of information here. When I came up against this issue myself in 1992, I was informed by the local Council that the boundary of each property was taken as the right hand side of each property, viewed from the front of each property. However, this was the same Council Planning Office which had given permission for a previous tenant to have a kitchen extension built, over the main drain. This cost the same Planning Office's Council a large sum to remove and rebuild the extension.

Moral: check central government law, before trusting local government!

Land_Registry

The SPIF is simply a form the seller completes to explain a variety of things to the buyer as to what their understanding is - it is simply a view and you may find neighbours have a different view

Putting a new fence up inside an existing boundary can help although what happens re the lost few inches/feet? - we see this suggested quite a bit and you can then end up with issues over a few inches/feet of land. Not always but possible.

T marks and covenants can help understand what the position was previously, for example when the properties were first developed and sold. As the properties are sold over time, often several times, that covenant (not the other restrictive ones) are rarely binding on the new owners. So in many ways they can be very similar to the SPIF, namely a view of how things were or have been viewed at a point in time.

So take any available information, pool it, combine it with you and your neighbour's own understanding and wishes and agree what to do next. If you want to pay for the new fence but still want to maintain that it is shared then say so and as and when the new neighbours appears explain that to them and repeat the process - ultimately these things tend to come down to neighbours agreeing on what happens and that repeats with every change of neighbour.

Our online blog article offers some guidance on this as well

And you will find lots of useful information online elsewhere, in MSE threads and on other forums as well. Ultimately they should all help you to appreciate that in the end it is something for neighbours to discuss and agree on and hopefully that is what you achieve