Opinions on this boundary required please.

swingaloo

On this road all the houses have a garage which is attached to the house and a drive going up between them. But at the top end of the rad there are just 2 houses which have garages built at the back rather than joined to the house. These have been there since the houses were built.
House 1 has the garage at the back and house 2 has the garage joint to the house.  House 2 has just been sold and the new owners think they have a 'shared drive' as there is a gate in the fence in their garden through which they bring the bins out. The old neighbours always did this. 
 There is no access through the garage, there is no back door to it so the side gate is the only way into the back garden without going through the house, The new people are insisting that they have a right to park a motorbike or let their children play on the drive. They are also having building work done soon and are saying they will need the gates to property 1 left unlocked at all times of the day. 
The people at house 1 have always thought the drive was completely there's but they have only had the one person next door since the houses were new so its never been an issue before.  
I said i would get a copy of the deed from the Land Registry for them (they are an elderly couple who don't use the internet)  and I've put the image of the plan below.
However, I don't know if I'm looking at it correctly.  Obviously the deeds show the boundary in red but looking at all the other houses on the road there is a line (Ive marked them purple) which implies there is a boundary line going down the middle of the drive between each house. Also I know the red line cannot be taken as 100% accurate but it does look as if there is a part of the drive between house 1 and 2 which may belong to house 2.
Can i ask what others think please, would you say it is a shared drive or not? Thanks.

getmore4less

Need the words could be shared or there could be pedestrian access down the side of  house 2. either owned(by 2) or shared.

greatcrested

The red boundary line appears to go down the centre of the drive between houses 1 & 2. So each property includes half the drive. It may well be that they each also have a ROW over the other prperty's half - but you need to download the Titles of both properties and read(and quote here) the text.

swingaloo

Thanks for the replies.  I was of the opinion that it looks as if both sides own a part of the drive but the couple concerned are adamant that it is all their property. There has always been a big gate across the bottom of the drive which they put up and the people next door were always fine about only using the drive for getting the bins out. They say that as the garage was built when the house was and that as it is in line with the fence that if its a shared drive then it follows that half of their garage would be on next doors land. 
Im tempted to print of the titles for both properties just to give them a definitive answer but as they are £7 a sheet (and it says that each set may contain up to 8 pages) I wont be doing so as its not my property, I was only trying to help. When I told them the red boundary line looks as if it goes down the middle of the drive the male half of the couple almost had a coronary so I dont think he will take kindly to me saying it will cost £xx to find out for certain. 
I shall just stand well back when the fireworks start.

dimbo61

Are you on the correct Land registry website ?
No some scam site pretending to be LR ?
It should be £3 

Alter_ego

It looks to me that the edge of the garage is on the centre line of the drive. Which would support a shared drive.

swingaloo

Yes definitely the right website, its the Gov.uk one  not the scam type ones that charge you for doing what you can do yourself.. That where I got this plan from and it was £3.  You can also get the 'Title Plan' for £3 but looking at the example one  they show it appears there will be no more information on that than I already have. To get the Title Deeds which have all the info on is £7 per page per house.

Jeepers_Creepers

Going solely by the plans in these deeds, it would appear to me that the boundary line is nowhere near the centre of the space between the two houses, but is a continuation of the wall of No1's garage. So, if that space shown between the properties represents the whole drive(?), then it would appear that No1 has a full-vehicle-width of drive available to them to get to their garage, and No2 has a much narrower remaining strip of it available to them.

Is that whole space betwixt the houses the driveway? How wide is it in total? How does No2 get to their garage - is it over this drive, or is there a separate way? 

The written content of the deeds will surely add some clarification to this? Having just bought their house, the new owners of No2 must feel confident of their rights? Or perhaps they just 'assumed'...

Going purely by these plans, it would appear that No1 has a full-width access to their garage, and No2 might only have a path-width access to their house for bins etc. But the 'wording' should clarify.

swingaloo

Thank you for the replies. Number 2's garage is built onto the front of the house, its the bit which juts out on the drawing. It has a drive in front of it which is slightly raised up from the 'joint' drive. If you look at the houses opposite and further down the road all of them have integral garages. Its just the last 4 houses which have separate garages. All the houses opposite have a shared drive up the sides of the houses and they seem to be used 50/50 and they mostly seem to keep their vehicles on the drives in front of their garages. 
 Im not sure of the width of the drive but if you drive a car up between the 2 houses then you would just about be able to open both car doors to get out either side.
The couple in house one dont put the car in the garage and they park at the bottom end of the drive at the side of their garden and they are the ones who have put the double gates across the bottom of the drive and have always held the keys for the gates. The people who did live in house 2 never put their car in the garage either but kept it parked in front of the garage doors at the front of their house.

getmore4less

If they just bought it and making a claim  get them to show/copy their deeds that prove their claim. 

NameUnavailable

The boundary line clearly shows that a strip of land to the side of of the house belongs to the neighbour. I doubt it would be possible for the people in the house with the garage at the rear to drive a car up the driveway without being on the neighbours land however which would indeed suggest that it is a shared drive of some sort. It would seem to make sense that house 1 has use of the drive for access to their garage, so house 2 couldn't park a car on it, just use it for access to their rear garden (or maybe park a bike as they said). It does appear that the portion of drive for house 2 is a much narrower strip than house 1 which would support this view but the deeds should clarify the matter. As house 2 have recently bought, I would expect that they know what it says.