Hedge cutting cost without my agreement

Undervalued

triharder said:

Have checked my deeds and the wording states I along with others have rights of access,and that I must  contribute towards the maintenance and upkeep of reasonable costs of the surface!
No where does it mention hedges or verges

Obviously you know the location and we don't. What would happen if nobody cut the hedges? Would the road remain usable? If so I suppose you could opt out of paying on the basis that it is not mentioned in the deeds. However if they have to be cut for the road to be usable (even if not yet but after some more growth) then you have all clearly got to come to some arrangement.

I am no expert but generally a landowner is not obliged to go onto his neighbours property to cut overhanging branches. As I understand it, the person being overhung can cut off everything that extends beyond the boundary line if he so chooses. However if they do I think the are supposed to make and wood / fruit etc available to the owner of the tree / hedge?

It seems to me the interested parties need to get together and work out an acceptable solution. Even that may not be easy as one may be happy with road full of potholes with overhanging branches, providing he can get his battered Land Rover down it. Another may want a race track quality surface and nothing that could possibly scratch the paintwork on his Aston Martin!

MoneySeeker1

You say "reasonable costs of the surface" is the exact wording. That sounds pretty cut and dry, ie that "road" means "road" and not anything else. So, it does sound like you can't be made to pay by someone trying to make a decision on behalf of everyone else (as well as themselves). So, I would agree that it seems to boil down to whether the road would end up obstructing all of you with the hedge overgrowing it or no. If it would overgrow the road and everyone's vehicles would suffer, then you might consider making a fair voluntary payment. If it wouldnt overgrow the road and it's just been cut because someone wants things "neat and manicured", then their wishes don't prevail over someone else that isn't concerned whether it's "neat and manicured" and may actively want it to be a bit "wild"/left for wildlife to do their thing.

TELLIT01

Surely the underlying problem here is that one person seems to have taken it upon themselves to have work done without the knowledge or agreement of others affected.  Until and unless that individual could show me where I have a legal liability for the costs, and that individual has the right to agree work without consultation, I would not be paying. 

MoneySeeker1

I agree with that. That person was making presumptions on behalf of other people and that is not acceptable behaviour. They might have thought that the fact you did pay a smaller voluntary contribution before gave them carte blanche to spend your money without consultation in the future. However, they should still have consulted first and that means with everyone involved. 

What do the other home-owners in the road think? Were any of them consulted? Do any of them dispute this?

It sounds like the ideal situation would be that any of you could make a decision about what they personally wanted and then ask the others involved what they think and then have a communal agreement to go forward (or otherwise). Really you all need to have a meeting (however informal) once a year. Maybe drinks & snacks at Christmas period or similar? During which you can all informally agree what is (or isn't) going to happen in your road.

But I do know that's a counsel of perfection and "there's always one" (ie one who thinks they just want what they personally want regardless) and that may or may not be possible. Also people living in the road may have different financial circumstances to each other and that could be the case even if you all had similar financial circumstances to start with. So a couple or family can afford more than a single person can for instance or there might be identical households (all singles or all couples) but someone has suffered unexpected financial setback of a type that wasn't their fault (ie unexpected redundancy).

FreeBear

MoneySeeker1 said:What do the other home-owners in the road think? Were any of them consulted? Do any of them dispute this?

As a collective, the OP needs to get together with the other home owners and jointly send this barista a short letter referring him to Arkell v Pressdram (1971). Should the contractor make any further demands, use the same reply, and point out that the home owners were not party to any agreement.

sgun

So 6 of you (including the neighbour) have been billed £400 each for cutting a hedge, so that is £2400 for a hedge cut? And it had already been trimmed last year? Even at 200m long that is pretty extortionate for a maintenance cut. If the neighbour who contracted this out has done more than maintenence then I would definitely refuse to pay. What exactly have they had done and what plants make up the hedge?

MoneySeeker1

Valid point. That does seem very dear. Maybe the OP has some idea how long it took/what equipment was used/how many people were doing the work and could work out a rough guess as to what is a fair price for themselves. I am also surprised the way the contractor directly has approached the house-owners for their "share" of the bill and isn't dealing directly with the person that employed them only and it does feel like there might be something odd going on here (eg a bit of nepotism used in selecting the contractor or organiser of this arranged it with someone that is a mate of theirs). At the least there should have been 3 quotes for this and I see no sign of that having happened.

triharder

Thank you everyone who has posted,especially Freebear,I love the Arkell v Pressdram..
I had a quote from another contractor who said it would have been less than half the price and was appalled.
Turns out that the person who carried out the work and the person that contracted him without anyone’s knowledge have a longstanding history!
I am not intending to pay and will take the advice of citizens advice if required,especially after the bullying behaviour demonstrated yesterday when he invited himself in to “discuss”.There was a lot of lawyer speak involving the words conceed,we didn’t conceed anything!
Thank you all again,let’s hope today is a peaceful one.😍

MoneySeeker1

So I was right about nepotism or similar having been used to choose the contractor. Am not surprised. One thing to check out is whether there is a legal obligation to do what the standard householder-in-the-street would do and get 3 quotes for any work on house needing doing. I'm pretty sure there is a legal obligation to do this and to show those quotes to other "interested parties" eg yourself.

What are the other householders involved doing about this? Have they just paid up or are they refusing?

triharder

The person concerned is performing a divide and rule routine whereby he is going round to pensioners who live on their own and saying he was in his words, that he was just being neighborly...one has paid him the full amount another has agreed to pay half to keep the peace, we haven't agreed to pay anything and after yesterday we will refuse to discuss it with him on our own we will only discuss when all 6 parties are present.That way he cant pit one of us against the other.
Nepotism is the correct term...if I told you he invited himself in,sat himself down ,  took up the offer of a cup of coffee and then proceeded to ask for some of the cake that was on the side!!!