Boundary dispute

annie206

Hi everyone, I'm looking for a bit of advice concerning a boundary dispute with our neighbour. Our house was left empty for 10 years before we bought it 16 months ago. The previous owner lived in London and only visited the house 3 times as his wife didn't like the house. This gave the neighbours pretty much a free reign over our garden. They had the boundary trees removed and left it open so they could use our garden, they also cut down many trees in our garden to improve their view, and also dumped all of their garden rubbish in our garden - I am forever digging up bin bags full of rotten grass cuttings. When we moved in they had just erected a fence about a foot inside their boundary, with a gate in it. This was so they could maintain the back of their fence from our side. The strip of land that was left was about 2.5 to 3 foot wide, with a foot of it being theirs and the rest of it being ours which ran between their new fence and our stone path. I planted up our side of the strip of land as it was so ugly and bare, and created quite a nice flower border in which I'd planted a rose that had belonged to my late Mom, who had passed away 6 months before we moved in. Our neighbours knew about all of this as we were speaking at the time and they often came around and admired the garden - they also knew about my Moms rose being planted there.
Unfortunately, before we moved in, our neighbours had fallen out with another couple in the street, this had nothing to do with us at all, so we remainded neutral. Our neighbours took offence to us speaking with the other neighbours so decided not to speak to us again.
One night we had a call from them telling us we had to removed all of our plants from the strip of land as they were reinstating their old boundary with a new fence. We contested this as they told us the original boundary was up against our stone path. This is clearly not the boundary as our stone wall runs from the front of our house, down the side, and stops where the old tree boundary was, so the boundary runs behind our wall, not in line with it.
We did dig up our plants as I didn't want any of them damaged by their son in law, who was adamant he was putting up a new fence for them. We dug my Moms rose up in the pouring rain, while they sat laughing at us (!!!!) Two days later their son in law was putting posts in - butted up against our stone wall, in line with it, not behind it. My husband told him we still had a dispute and until we figured it out to not put the fence up, he replied by saying he was putting it up and that was that, and put the fence up right against our path, in line with our wall.
I managed to purchase some documents from the Land Registry and since then I've also done some digging. Apparently, the previous owner of our house had a dispute with the same neighbours over the boundary so employed a surveyor to come and measure it out to the cm. I contacted the surveyor, who submitted the details to the Land Registry in 2016, and he said he remembered it well as the neighbours had been so rude to him. He has sent us orginal documents and the photographs he took on the day of the boundary. You can see the yellow pegs running up the garden where the boundary is (which have since disappeared) - well behind our wall and about a 1.5 feet away from our path. He said he will gladly come out, free of charge, and do the measurements again if need be.
The fence that has been erected is in a grey plastic and the posts are not deep enough, so the whole thing sways in the wind. We also live on a steep hill, with the garden sloping down the garden. As the fence isn't fitted properly, with no bottom gravel boards, there are huge gaps underneath it. The gaps are so high that our cat can walk under it without ducking. 
Maybe, if the fence wasn't such a monstrosity, I'd maybe let it be, but it's horrific, it looks like a wonky concrete wall. 
So after all that waffling (sorry) what im asking is, do I have a simple case? If I have original documents showing the boundary runs behind our wall, plus photos and an offer from the surveyor to measure again for free, is this just a case of a letter from a solicitor to get them to move the fence? If it was moved back I would have a decent, well made, secure fence erected in line with our wall, to hide whatever they do next door, but as it stands at the moment, if I wanted to put a fence up in front of theirs I'd have to step our fence in to our garden so it wouldn't run in line with our wall.
Mediation is probably out of the question now as relations have broken down beyond repair.
Thank you in advance for any advice xx

foxy-stoat

Have you spoken to your solicitor yet, I would take any evidence you have about the previous dispute also and ask them for advice.
This wont be simple and you will have to disclose your dispute when/if you sell the property in the future.

hazyjo

Did your vendors declare a dispute?

annie206

hazyjo said:

Did your vendors declare a dispute?
No, no dispute was ever mentioned or disclosed to us. I have asked the Estate Agent who sold us the house to ask the vendor to contact us, but he never has x

annie206

foxy-stoat said:

Have you spoken to your solicitor yet, I would take any evidence you have about the previous dispute also and ask them for advice.
This wont be simple and you will have to disclose your dispute when/if you sell the property in the futureI have 

I have emailed a solicitor who advised us to try mediation but Im certain we are way past the mediation stage. So i'm just not sure what to do next x

SameOldRoundabout

Have you had a solicitor letter sent out to them? My nan had a similar thing, where the house directly behind her was bought. There is a huge old oak tree between the boundaries, so back in the 80’s my Gramps walled inside it, the neighbour walled along their boundary line and there was a 2 foot strip belonging to my grandparents behind their wall. New guy moved in and tried to bully my 94 year old nan to let him take the strip as his own. He was really quite nasty. Luckily a strongly worded solicitors letter ended the matter for her. 

Surely their is action to be taken against your vendor if you incur costs, as they’re legally bound to declare a dispute!

hazyjo

annie206 said:

No, no dispute was ever mentioned or disclosed to us. I have asked the Estate Agent who sold us the house to ask the vendor to contact us, but he never has x

Speak with the solicitor you dealt with. Double check the Property Info form (or whatever it's called) to see if they didn't tick the box at all and it got missed, or if it was definitely a 'no dispute'.

Forget the EA. Pointless. They were working for the vendor and will absolutely not want to get involved. Nothing to do with them.

Davesnave

The first thing to realise is that the neighbour will not move their fence. If the fence is to move, it will have to be taken down by your contractors, which would be after the neighbour been warned via solicitor about their trespass and given the opportunity to move it voluntarily.

Only work thorough the proper legal channels. Remember that although it's good to have a 'free' surveyor, this won't be cheap and you are banking on the other party not also hiring a surveyor who produces a favourable report for them! Only go ahead if you really think the cost is worth it.

If the surveyor was appointed as recently as 2016, your vendor should not have withheld details of the dispute from you as your post implies. It's worth speaking to your solicitor to see if any heavy costs arising might be sent their way, as if there was no disclosure, they must have lied on the TA6 form.

Sachs

Hindsight is 20:20 and rarely helpful to you but I will just cover a brief bit of background in case anyone reads this facing similar problems.

You indicate that initially there was a fence not on the boundary line. This is an extremely problematic scenario and the first thing one should do is fence to the fullest extent of your property. You also indicate that there was a gate in the fence that was there. Now admittedly, because of point 1 this is a gate between two parts of your neighbours land but really, you should never allow a gate in to your property from a neighbours unless you which to give them a right of access to your land.

You also removed the Roses. I understand why but by doing so you removed the only existing boundary feature, one that if they had destroyed they would have been committing criminal damage, potentially getting the police on your side.

As for next steps, I agree with above posters. Send them a solicitors letter with all the evidence advising them they are trespassing and have 14 days to rectify the situation. Once 14 days have passed, send some burly contractors (ideally when they are out) to carefully remove their fence and place it in their garden and install your own very secure fence on the correct boundary line.

princeofpounds

Hi, sorry to hear about your situation. 
You may find it useful to visit gardenlaw's boundaries forum. You will find lots of threads on these sorts of topics over the years and some important stickies. Please write about your case with more precision and clarity than you have here - use paragraphs and leave out most of the gossip about who is falling out with who, it's not relevant to your legal situation. Your situation [I]may[/I] be relatively straightforward, but even straightforward boundary disputes can drag on, cost a bit of money and can sometime turn on relatively small details.

The key problem you have here is identifying the boundary feature. A property title usually only shows general boundaries. This is a legal concept, but generally-speaking it means that the plan identifies physical boundary features on the ground, which are what usually actually defines the boundary in law.

The situation you have here is that there have been multiple instances of interference with the boundary features from both sides, all of which have happened inside the last 20 years, so you will need to gather the best evidence you can of where the boundary feature historically was. You cannot just take a tape measure and scale from the plan (usually... more below). The position of the boundary when you acquired the property may also be useful; the fact that the neighbour fenced short of the boundary at one time could be helpful to you, as it is usually assumed that landowners fence to the fullest extent of their land. Moving your own plants was a mistake as it could be interpreted as a concession, although probably not a critical one. The fact that you have a surveyor as a potential witness with some kind of historical evidence is definitely helpful. 

Now, there is another possibility given the involvement of this surveyor. There is another type of boundary called a determined boundary, which is one which has been precisely measured and through a legal process that allows it to become the boundary in law. Whilst it would seem more rational to do boundaries this way, it was abandoned as standard practice during the early days of the land registry because it was too complex and expensive. So they tend to be used more rarely e.g. when subdividing land without boundary features, or as the product of a dispute settlement. It's possible that this process was what already happened for your property. It's also possible that it never actually became a determined boundary in law and was just part of some informal settlement. Ask the surveyor to explain exactly what happened, if he would. In writing would be best.

If you have legal cover on your house insurance (I hope you do) then you should probably use it to tackle the problem.They normally have specialists in areas like this.
You should also speak to your conveyancing solicitor about what was disclosed re boundary disputes when you bought the property- this sounds like something you should have known about.

Good luck - hopefully a stiff backbone and a lawyer's letter are all your need to get this sorted. Keep us up to date and do ask more questions, I'm sure we'll help where we can.

annie206

Thank you all so much for your replies, it's been really helpful. I shall get in touch with a solicitor and get a letter sent. Fingers crossed it does the job. Ill update on here once I know the outcome. Thanks again!