Council Fence dispute

Baxter100

Hi,

We recently moved into a new house. At the rear of the house was a higgldy piggldy hedge which separates the rear garden from a council owned green space and pathway.

The original title plan shows the hedge to be within our boundaries (the red line). However over the years this hedge has potentially grown outwards a bit over the council owned land.

We recently had the hedge cut down and instead put a fence up. We positioned the fence to be in line with the existing rear hedges that our neighbours both sides have to look sensible.

There has been a complaint about the fence (probably from a dog walker who preferred looking at hedges). There were three elements to the complaint:

1. Hedge should not have been cut down
2. Fence not the correct height
3. Fence positioned on council owned land

We had a council enforcement officer come round to take a look. He has rejected points 1/2, but is looking into point 3. He has said that if the fence is positioned on council owned land then it must be moved backwards, regardless of how little this distance is. He said that he would be able to check the original curtilage to see exactly where the boundary line is.

Questions:

1. What the hell is the curtilage and does it really outline to the mm where the boundary is?

2. The council man claims that the title plan means diddly squat when determining boundaries. Is this right?

3. If they tell us to move the fence back a few inches (cost of a few hundred quid), is it worth contesting it?

Baxter100

Also the council man is coming back to us with a decision next week. Is there anything I should look into/prepare in the meantime?

Le_Kirk

Curtilage is an area of land attached to a house and forming one enclosure with it, therefore basically your back garden but NOT INCLUDING any open land beyond it. You need to check your deeds as it normally shows your border and hence the curtilage. It is a line on a drawing and therefore cannot be accurate, however if it lines up with your neighbours, it should provide a pretty convincing argument to the council.

Baxter100

Hi Le-Kirk,

See here the title plan registered with the Land Registry - https://postimg.org/image/cjluf9qgx/

At the bottom of the plan it seems to clearly show the entire hedge (as it was then) within our ownership.

However the council ***** claimed that this was irrelevant, and instead he needs to check the curtilage document they have (?) which will tell him the exact position of the boundary to the mm.

societys_child

Don't see how anyone can offer advice until "the council ***** " (whatever that is) returns with his decision.

Baxter100

Yes thanks, I guess it's wait and see.

I'm just a little surprised about the claim that the land registry title plan gives no indication as to where the boundary of the property is, and that this will be solely determined by the curtilage records stored away in the vault at the council. Is this correct?

societys_child

Yes, title plans are not always particularly accurate. Problem is, scaled up, the red line can easily represent an area a foot wide or more, on the ground.

DaftyDuck

Your main problem may be that that plan clearly(? ) says "existing hedge - to be retained"...

Well, it's not too clear - in fact I'm not sure what it does say, but if it does say that, there may be an additional problem... if the enforcement officer notes it too. Although it does seem like the enforcement officer doesn't think it a problem at the time of the visit!

Replacing a hedge with a fence does leave the problem of which line to put the fence. Generally, the mid-line of the hedge is the accepted norm, the line it's planted in the ground, not the outer or inner cut line. However, if the hedge was really planted on your property, that would be different.

Oh, may it have been a neighbour making the complaint, not a dog-walker?

But, wait for the report. Nothing you can really do until then.

Edit to add: I suppose, if you want to believe the plan is 100% accurate, your border appears to be marked as the inner line of the hedge... from the "T" marks, but the outer edge from the red line... Plans are not regarded as foolproof in such cases, as their scale seldom allows such precision.

Baxter100

Yes it does say that about the hedge on the plan, but doesn't mention about it in the actual deeds. It just mentions the requirement to "maintain a good and sufficient fence of the type erected". The officer bloke also threw that bit of the complaint out so must have been happy with the taking down of the hedge.

It isn't either of our direct neighbours, but could well be someone else nearby who made the complaint.

The bit I am surprised about is that the officer is so adamant that the property boundary can be calculated definitively from these curtilage records which the Council have stored somewhere. Everything I've read seems to indicate that actual boundaries are a very grey area indeed, so found this a bit odd.

He said and I quote, "make no mistake, if you have stolen an inch of council land then the fence will have to be moved".

Doozergirl

And how does he profess to enforce this 'stealing' of an inch? Through the courts with taxpayers' money? When LAs are experiencing austerity?

Was he a planning officer? Fence height might be a planning issue, but the positioning of boundaires isn't usually.

Baxter100

I guess so? He went off on one about how important it was that the Council took a zero tolerance approach to boundary disputes.

He is a 'Council Enforcement Officer'.