18mo after moving into new build, told our garden fence temporary, will now lose 31.5msq

fezster

Are you able to obtain the planning application from the council's website? Planning drawings are to scale so should be accurate.
Whichever way this goes, you are in a strong position. The fence is clearly not "temporary" by any stretch of the imagination. The side gate is also made to measure, so the developer has made a monumental mistake. How this translates into your rights, I dont know, but I'd at the very least be arguing that your starting position is what is on the ground (and for 18 months no less!) - any reduction will have to be agreed with your lender as well. 

davidmcn

fezster said:

any reduction will have to be agreed with your lender as well. 

Possibly - but I think only if the lender's valuation was based on an actual site inspection after the fences had been erected. Otherwise no need to involve them - they're not losing anything from the registered charge. 

sheramber

You mention that you didn't want concreted posts and had to get access from the other  developer for the landscaping of your garden.
Does that mean that was no fence at all when you bought the house so you didn't see where the boundary would be?
Or was there a temporary fence there which was replaced by the current one?

HampshireH

OP has previously suggested that this is the original developers installed fence and they have worked up o it 

Her landscaper discussed replacing with concrete posts as part of her garden changes. At least that's how I read it.

moneymattersnatter

sheramber said:

You mention that you didn't want concreted posts and had to get access from the other  developer for the landscaping of your garden.
Does that mean that was no fence at all when you bought the house so you didn't see where the boundary would be?
Or was there a temporary fence there which was replaced by the current one?

The fence was there when we moved in, but before next door was a car park. Our landscaping needed a load of soil, and just beyond it, there was a huge amount of it. The two developers are amicable. We asked our site manager if we could have it, they said it would do them a favour, so then we just had to agree a way to move it.  Our landscaper looked at taking the panels out, but you can see the posts are pretty substantial.  They are very deeply concreted in, so we ended up sawing a panel out so the diggers could get through from their side to ours.  The landscaper made good the panel on completion of works.  

I'm anticipating a defence; we wanted to give you the best fence for security and aesthetic reasons, even if only temporarily.  The fact the posts are concreted in doesn't mean anything. We now need to build on the tarmac.  Everything is temporary until we change it....  Can anyone comment on whether this might be reasonable? 

tacticalbanjo

seradane said:
But what we have here is developers who will have in their possession measured, vector drawings, which can identify the actual line of the boundary down to the millimetre, via GPS. There is a 'real' boundary here, somewhere on that site, that will be easily established once the dispute is raised. Of course none of us have this information, and all this measuring from plans is wildly inaccurate, but those plans have been produced from that accurate drawing, so in this case "measuring" will likely give you a fairly good indication of roughly what's correct or not.

GPS is only accurate to 30cm with the absolute latest receivers. Galileo can only do 1m accuracy, Glosnass is 2m. Military receivers are more accurate but obviously neither house builder is going to have one. So, no a millimetre accurate boundary line cannot be identified using GPS or any other method.

lincroft1710

Oh for the days when there were house deeds which gave precise plot measurements of which I used to see plenty decades ago, "frontage to Dispute Street 34 ft 7ins, length on eastern side 153 ft 2 in, length on western side 146 ft 8 in, distance from SE corner of plot to SW corner of plot 37 ft 4 in". 

davidmcn

lincroft1710 said:

Oh for the days when there were house deeds which gave precise plot measurements of which I used to see plenty decades ago, "frontage to Dispute Street 34 ft 7ins, length on eastern side 153 ft 2 in, length on western side 146 ft 8 in, distance from SE corner of plot to SW corner of plot 37 ft 4 in". 

Yes, there can be precise measurements of the dimensions of the plot. But that just leaves you with a "floating box" unless you know what you're "anchoring" it to, which tends to be where the GPS coordinates come into it.

rik111

Just remember, possession is 9/10 of the law. Don't get bullied into agreeing anything, it will. cost the developer a fortune to drag you through the courts with no guarantee of success and once they realise you are not a push over they will realise they need to make you an offer you cant refuse. 

silvercar

rik111 said:

Just remember, possession is 9/10 of the law. Don't get bullied into agreeing anything, it will. cost the developer a fortune to drag you through the courts with no guarantee of success and once they realise you are not a push over they will realise they need to make you an offer you cant refuse. 

Agree with this. It is all going to be about attitude. When they realise they have a fight on their hands and possible court case, they have three options:
1. incur court costs etc to take some of the land you currently have.
2. Pay you off
3. shift the problem down the road. There must be somewhere on the estate that they can “save” 40cm. We’ve all seen developments where the end house has a slightly odd shaped garden, a parking space that is at an odd angle, a garage that can’t be entered by driving straight. All because the plans approved didn’t match exactly what was on the ground.