Neighbour building on land.

frogglet

Next time he has  a gathering report him. 
I dont understand what you mean by pebbledash. Is this on your house?

Chandler85

The fence seems to be attached to the concrete upright at the end the garden, or the corner or whatever you want to call it.

If he is breaching COVID regs just report him, get him in trouble, if he is a police officer then it will cause him a whole world of pain.

All the talk about extension etc is really hard to know when you have only taken a picture of the fence.

davidmcn

springmagpie said:

I will almost guarantee his superior officer will have a word about not getting involved in any disputes and to put right what he has done wrong. Police officers have lost their jobs for less

Eh? I can understand covid-breaching parties, but what have boundary disputes got to do with his job?

Tokmon

EB75 said:

We are not allowed to paint or in fact touch our neighbours fence so are stuck with a large battle ship grey 6ft fence overlooking our garden.

So you asked if you could paint it and he said no and told you to not even touch it? I don't understand why he would care what color your side of the fence was?

pbartlett

Don't have any further contact with your neighbour. You need to decide what you want to do. Your options are:

1. do nothing. Forget it - move on with your life.

2. go to court over a boundary dispute.  Get a solicitor to do it - the first your neighbour will know is when they receive either a letter before action from your solicitor or the actual court papers. Google for examples. Make sure you are 100% sure it is your property built on (fence, extension etc). 

If it the court confirms that things have been constructed over part of your land, then this is a trespass which offers a number of remedies.

An injunction may be sought to require the adjoining owner to remove the relevant part of the building / fence etc, or damages may be ordered in order to compensate you for any loss suffered.

Jeepers_Creepers

Blimey.

What a shame that (a) you haven't kept a good record of all these shenanigans as they occurred, and (b) have LP on your insurance.

Are you saying that your extension/house was set in a good 400mm or so from your actual boundary line? And that your neighb - rather than therefore building his extension fully detached from yours as he should have, instead encroached onto your land to connect with yours? If so, good lawd, and what a shame this wasn't sorted at the time.

IF the side of your house/extension was always 400mm inside your true boundary and IF your 1m fence also ran from this corner, then I don't think it's any great surprise that your neighb actually believed this was the correct boundary. And, when he started building, you did nothing about it. :-(  I've really no idea what - if anything - you can do about this now; what are the 'legalities'?

And now you have a fence issue. There is every chance that this guy actually believes he's put his new fence on 'his' land - it's within the boundary line of his extension. If he truly believed - at the time of building his extension - that he was building up to his-and-your border, then I guess he truly believes that 'his' new fence is also correctly positioned, comfortably within 'his' land. 

Your problem is, you are trying to suggest that you 'knew' he was building on your land and did nothing about it? Or, you didn't realise that this 'building' land was yours, but still did know you had a strip of land beyond your fence? Or is it - you weren't aware of either; you didn't know that he was building on 'your' land at the time, and you didn't know that the strip behind your fence was yours until now?

At least you now have a detailed surveyor's map? You can now 'prove' that the strip beyond your fence is yours. What this means for his extension, I've no idea. I suspect you're stuffed there.

I don't believe he has adverse possession over the garden and fence strip, tho', since the OP has a valid reason for leaving the 400mm gap, and originally had hedges there too. Mind you, would the presence of this hedge prevent you from accessing the other side of it for repairs?!  (When I replaced the fence at the bottom of our garden, I discussed it with the neighb across there - who had their own small picket fence - and explained I was going to put our fence in a bit so I could have access for repairs. I have a small 'hatch' in this fence for that purpose. I'd be mighty peeved if the neighb tried to claim that narrow strip, and would take action to prevent them from doing so.)

Anyhoo, as far as the facts go, you always knew that your fence was 400mm inside your land? You also had your hedge growing on your land on the other side of that fence? Regardless of whether this neighb 'genuinely' believed that that strip was theirs, the facts are that he never 'used' it before now, never incorporated it into his land, never took 'possession' of it - until now, with this new fence. This is criminal trespass, knowingly or not, which is a tad naughty. For a cop.

Anyhoo, you have had a survey carried out? Cool. How accurate is it, and how certain can the findings be proven?

What to do? Start going 'legal', I guess. If you don't have LP on your insurance, you are going to have to start writing these legal missives yourself. I don't know if folk on here can advise? But I guess you are telling this neigh - officially, legally, and by a recorded means - that he has (either intentionally or inadvertently) committed criminal trespass and that you give him X days to reposition his fence to within his land. Include the evidence of your survey - make it clear it is beyond dispute.

If he doesn't reply, start recording (do you have a nice upstairs view of fence?), pop round to calmly and socially-distanced tell him what you are about to do, and start removing his fence - what's he going to do? Shout? Take a swing at you? I hope so.

EB75

Thank you for all the great advice, very helpful.  As you can see from the photo taken before the extension, the fence is clearly on our land and our gutters are actually different colours to the ones next door. The black bit that sticks out on our black gutters, over our fence has now been taken to make room for the extension(The hedge or bush is on the real boundary line).  I can't see how you would not notice this when completing the work. It is quite obvious when we look back now, but once someone moves the the pebble dash line to match their new extension and is adamant all the right check have been done, we believed him. Surely a neighbour would not be so sly?? Maybe he felt he could take his chance whilst we cared for our 3 kids under 7, two of whom at the time had additional needs, and one is noise sensitive so we couldn't go outside anyway due to the building work!

our land 

moneysavinghero

Nothing is really clear from that photo, other than you have some flowers on the table.

Seashell517

Do you talk to the neighbour in question? Because otherwise he probably has no idea about the situation of your children to be able to 'take advantage' of it...

Looking at that, I would assume that the fence post was on the boundary and therefore the extension could right up to it. The line between the two different pebbledash colours wouldn't have stuck out to me, except that you've mentioned it. If the extension is already up, then what are you hoping to achieve? Financial compensation? I can't see that a court would demand for the extension to be taken down over 20cm of overhang, especially if you're bringing it up years later... I also don't really understand how you didn't notice at the time, tbh.

EB75

We  did speak , prior to us asking him to stop having people around over lock down. He has since ignored us. He was well aware of our family situation. 
My issue is as well as the extension, he has now he has also taken our land to build his fence, curt our hedge and block paved our land at the front of our property. How much leeway to do give someone before you take action?
If I don't do something about this now, I may find due to the ongoing encroachment over time that in a few years I have no land left. Also the said individual involved has now built on other land not belonging to him the other side of his fence on the opposite side(not ours in this case) which would indicate this is not actually a mistake, he doesn't mind who's land he takes as long as he gets what he wants. Yes it's 40cm, but 40cm's x 24meters and getting bigger by the year!!