Neighbour increasing boundary fence/hedge height

Davesnave

Its helping to keep the laurel from flopping over at present, but ultimately laurel can go to 5m easily, so there's limited mileage in that.

Personally, I'd be worried about the long term safety aspect and the fact that trimming your side is being made deliberately difficult, so if it were me I'd go directly to planning. Yes, it's a dispute, but one that needs solving, so that maintenance is no longer an issue. A resolved dispute is better than what you have currently.

In the longer term, with the original wall only in place, I'd expect reasonableness from the neighbour as regards the height of the laurel. If I didn't get it, I'd take the pruning into my own hands. I did that with a neighbour who was on a different level (and planet!) at our last house and carved into 50% of the hedge each summer. She couldn't see what was going on anyway from her side. I'd guess this might be the same.

Mutton_Geoff

Interestingly, I use a local gardener who used to work for this neighbour but he walked away as she was too controlling over his work. His advice to her was to cut the hedging hard to encourage low bushy growth but this was ignored so the hedging shot up with leggy branches which then meant she had to install the trellis and plastic decoration.


Both our houses are listed buildings so my opinion is she is spoiling not only my light but the ambience of the old buildings. Her whole property is surrounded by screening of one sort or another. I plan a meeting with the other neighbours to tackle this as a local community.

Nobbie1967

You may as well put the dispute on record, as anyone coming to view the property is going to see that there is a neighbour dispute going on with a boundary in that state��

Mojisola

I'd be much more concerned about the water damage to the wall than the height of the extra bits.

Davesnave

Nobbie1967 wrote: »

You may as well put the dispute on record, as anyone coming to view the property is going to see that there is a neighbour dispute going on with a boundary in that state��

This is what I'm implying. The situation screams "Loony neighbour!"

Even if there's no dispute, that can be worse, because the longer things are tolerated, the greater the neighbour's sense of entitlement becomes and the harder it becomes for any incoming owner to challenge them.

pulliptears

Mutton_Geoff wrote: »

Both our houses are listed buildings so my opinion is she is spoiling not only my light but the ambience of the old buildings.

With that in mind I'd be tempted to contact the local conservation officer and have a chat. Potentially this is damaging the wall.

As someone above mentioned if this becomes a dispute then you would need to mention it if you're planning on selling, but if not then personally I'd be speaking to a few departments at the council.

if she's made to remove that awful trellis the laurel will flop over on to your side and you're then well within your rights to cut it.