High hedges

alumende27

Wondering if anyone here has had any experience of dealing with neighbours over high hedges? Our property is surrounded on two sides with high hedges that belong to the neighbours, one on the other side of a brick wall that belongs to us, and on the other side of a fence that belongs to us on the other side of the property. Both the wall and fence are around 2m high.

One of the hedges(!) is now over 8 metres tall and obstructs daylight and the overhang has pretty much killed off everything in the flower bed underneath. The owners of that property were initially amenable to cutting it back but have not replied to any letters since January. The next step, if they don't respond, is I assume to contact the council under the relevant legislation. Has anyone experience of doing this, success stories or otherwise?

I should add that due to the orientation of the property, the majority of the windows on our house face these hedges. There are no buildings on either side, our house is set back from the other properties, so the hedges are not there to stop us (or them) looking into each others windows.

Davesnave

The council will want you to try everything else before turning to the legislation.

You have sent a letter, but there is nothing better than inviting your neighbours round to see the problem from your POV and then discussing the matter over tea and biscuits. Try to find out what their worries are.

If an invite isn't accepted, the council may be able to point you in the direction of a mediator.

The High Hedges Act is always a last resort, but the fact that its there certainly helps.

alumende27

I should add that the neighbour in question is a commercial entity, and they have been round to the property a couple of times last year so they are well aware how it affects us. They proposed reducing the height (not as far as I wanted but I was happy they were willing to do something) and the overhang into our garden. However they never responded since I agreed for them to do this.

I am also well aware of the need to do as much as possible before going to the council. I was curious to know if anyone else had needed to take a high hedge issue to the council and how they got on. As I wrote in my original post, I'm interested to know if anyone has experience of doing this.

MonsieurFrugal

Have you asked the owners of the hedge if they'd be happy if you cut it yourself ?

No outlay or effort required from them and you get what you want

Billy_Bullocks

There's nothing stopping you cutting the overhang back to the boundary.

Schoolworker

We had high trees on an embankment and we had these triimed - high cost to us as had to get professionals in due to high embankment. Our neighbour sent a letter and we stated that we had trimmed these several years ago.
The next response was he was not happy with the trim and this is not true as he spoke to us through the fence about this. He had been hassling the previous owners for years.
He threatened us with the legislation and going to the council. Our understanding is that it depends on the guy who comes to the house to see whose side he will go to so we wrote a letter back to him to say they were being removed. £1400 cost to us for this but at least no need to trim at a cos of £900. He was happy but then asked when a divider would go up as it was a metal fence which so we can see into each other garden advised we had other costs to pay and would get there. He build a wooden fence on his side.