Coach house issue with carport

Jeepers_Creepers

stroppymare said:

Thank you.  When I first spoke to the householder and asked about the doors she told me she’d had permission from the local council I contacted the council who said that they had neither received nor given consent. I have now gone back to them for proof that Doors were never approved And this has been referred to planning enforcement.

Wow - you certainly have the measure of this person now! Unscrupulous person with no integrity. 

It would be a good outcome if Planning gets in touch with her to tell her to remove them - a nice easy solution. In theory there are planning rules about having a garage fronting too close to a road, so might be quite happy to enforce this. 

If the LA does not get involved, then it goes 'legal'. Do you have Legal Protection on your house insurance? If so, call them up for advice, and I'm sure they'll also pen the necessary legal letter. They will also guide you how to have them removed and sue for costs should they not comply. So, if you have LP, that should be you home and dry.  

If you can/wish to, first make one more direct approach to this 'lady'. Clear, calm, polite but completely matter-of-fact, inform them that you have checked the conditions of your lease and the contract that you signed on purchase, and they make the situation absolutely clear; these are 'carports' under your ownership and for which you have the responsibility of ensuring no alterations are made. Furthermore, you are responsible for not allowing anything to take place within the carports that could invalidate your insurance. Ideally print off a copy of these conditions for them, and highlight the significant clauses. Double-ideally take someone with you who will act as a witness. (Even have them carry out a surreptitious recording on their phone - just by holding their phone casually in their hand, so as to record the conversation - not pointing it at their face...). Give them a fair time to have the doors removed - one week? Two? Be magnanimous - say you can understand it if they genuinely thought they could do this, but there are a number of reasons why they cannot - road safety, your insurance, your signed contract, your personal ownership & responsibility for the carports. It would be wonderful if you could revoke their lease as Alan suggests, but I suspect this is unlikely to happen unless they refuse to remove the doors even after the legal process has completed.

If they don't, or if they make it clear they have no intention of doing this, contact your insurance co. immediately. If you don't have LP, then you may need to find out what the next best approach is. This will need doing correctly so you can demonstrate you have followed a fair and reasonable process and can prove you have given the householder fair warning before taking further action. Since I understand you actually 'own' these carports and they are leased to the other houses, you should - I believe - be entitled to remove these doors yourself, or have someone else do so if you wanted to. You should then be able to sue the householder for the cost of doing this - but give them their doors back. Better, I think, would be to force them to do so - and make good any damage such as hinge holes in the walls, etc. 

You'll need proper advice, tho'. I hope you do have LP?

NameUnavailable

You could also report this lady to the police for criminal damage.......

davidmcn

NameUnavailable said:

You could also report this lady to the police for criminal damage.......

Nothing which has been described here constitutes criminal damage.

NameUnavailable

davidmcn said:

NameUnavailable said:

You could also report this lady to the police for criminal damage.......

Nothing which has been described here constitutes criminal damage.

Section 1(1) Criminal Damage Act 1971 - A person who without lawful excuse destroys or damages any property belonging to another, intending to destroy or damage any such property, or being reckless as to whether any such property would be destroyed or damaged, shall be guilty of an offence.

greatcrested

Highlighting the word damage 3 times does not make it damage.

(and even if it could be argued to be damage, good luck pursuading the police to take action on this!)

davidmcn

NameUnavailable said:

davidmcn said:

NameUnavailable said:

You could also report this lady to the police for criminal damage.......

Nothing which has been described here constitutes criminal damage.

Section 1(1) Criminal Damage Act 1971 - A person who without lawful excuse destroys or damages any property belonging to another, intending to destroy or damage any such property, or being reckless as to whether any such property would be destroyed or damaged, shall be guilty of an offence.

Cite us any cases where a leaseholder carrying out works to their property has been deemed to constitute criminal damage. Would you make the same argument for all the other examples on the forum of unauthorised works? Apart from anything else, where's the intention to damage or destroy?

eddddy

It's just a straightforward landlord and tenant dispute. The leaseholder has probably breached a covenant in their lease by making alterations without the freeholder's consent.

It's not criminal damage - so the police won't be interested.

It's probably not a breach of planning regulations - so the council planning department won't be interested.