Scottish law- Burden- New development

Bryando

Hi,

An elderly couple I am friendly with have bought a house within a new housing scheme. They have realised that they need to pay somebody to cut their grass. They wish to stop this. The why sign up etc is another matter!

I think this would be a 'real burden'(Scottish legal term) in regards to their deeds. Is there any way they can maintain their grass themselves? I assume the neighbours also have the same clause.
Bringing me paperwork to look over for them.

comeandgo

Is it their grass in their garden or a maintenance fee for the cutting of the grass on the housing estate? I think very few hew developments don't have this as the council does not cut the grass to any high standard anymore.
Why has their solicitor not explained things to them?

mysterymurdoch

It sounds like the front grass outside the house. The estate will have unfenced, open front gardens that are cut by the factor. The problem is if the garden contractor misses this one garden they're not going to reduce their annual bill as it makes up such a tiny part of their overall work for the day (perhaps 100 gardens, each taking 3 minutes of their time, plus the open park/communal areas), so there will be no cost saving and no discount applied to their management bill.

moneyistooshorttomention

It's my understanding that, in the rest of the country (ie England and Wales) any service charges have to be written down in the deeds. Presumably it's the same for Scotland as well?

So - if it ain't in the deeds - then it ain't payable (provided things are the same in Scotland).

From what you say though - this does sound like a service charge and therefore check those deeds to say whether it's mentioned there.

They should have been told about any service charge in advance of buying the property - and it does look (from what you say) like the vendor "tried it on" and deliberately didn't mention it on the one hand and their solicitor was negligent and didn't mention it on the other hand.

davidmcn

Bryando wrote: »

An elderly couple I am friendly with have bought a house within a new housing scheme. They have realised that they need to pay somebody to cut their grass. They wish to stop this. The why sign up etc is another matter!

Is there any way they can maintain their grass themselves?

Nobody's going to stop them from cutting their own grass. But it's not going to save them any money from the communal charges. And they can forget about getting the title conditions amended - it's almost certainly in a Deed of Conditions which applies to the whole development, so any changes would be a collective matter.

That's assuming there actually is communal grass-cutting being arranged - often these things are planned in the deeds but never actually happen.