Fences

youth_leader

Happy Easter everyone.  I've just moved into a bungalow, and the garden is fenced on three sides. 
My neighbour to the right has just told me the right hand fence is hers, and a post is loose, and will I share the cost of having it refixed?  I was surprised and said yes, is shared responsibility common?  My Title deeds show the bungalow and garden outlined in red,  it's an oblong without any boundary marks.  

comeandgo

If the fence is hers why have you agreed to split the cost?

strawb_shortcake

With some of our fencing we have shared costs with neighbours, though according to the title deeds we only have responsibility for one part of fencing out the front. 
Bizarrely the bottom fence which borders a railway line doesn't reference any ownership or responsibility. 
We find keeping good relations with our neighbours more important than what's in the title deeds. 
However, fixing a fence post does seem a bit pretty and I'd not ask or expect to share costs for a trivial repair

gld73

In an ideal world, the person who officially has that boundary would maintain the boundary marker (fence, hedge or whatever they've chosen).  In reality, it seems to come down to the person who wants the work done has to pay for it! If your neighbour wants if fixed and you aren't too bothered either way, you could easily refuse and it'd probably still get done; wouldn't help with neighbourly relations though unfortunately!
The old wire fence is completely down between my back garden and my neighbour to one side. They're council tenants, but the council won't put in a new fence although the boundary is theirs, it's the tenants who are responsible. Their back garden is full of broken TVs, mattresses, old sofa etc and I'm keen to get a fence up to block it from sight. My garden is pretty neat, so they're not bothered about the lack of fence. Result: I'm going to have to pay for the full fence myself, and just hope they don't damage it, as I'll have to pay for the repairs myself too....

olgadapolga

gld73 said:

The old wire fence is completely down between my back garden and my neighbour to one side. They're council tenants, but the council won't put in a new fence although the boundary is theirs, it's the tenants who are responsible. 

It might be worth looking at the tenant's handbook about this issue. Where I used to live, the tenants only had to maintain boundaries between HA houses. Any boundary/fence between a HA tenant and a privately owned property was maintained by the HA. The fence fell down between our HA tenant neighbours and ourselves. The HA tried to tell us that it was our problem until we sent a copy of our deeds (which demonstrated that the boundary was not our responsibility) and a copy of the relevant page from their own tenants' handbook (which demonstrated that the HA and not the tenant had to deal with the issue). The HA put a new fence up.

With our new home, we have shared responsibility with the neighbours. One fence we replaced (on our side of the boundary) as we removed it due to it being rotten. The neighbours on that side made a big thing about the previous occupier erecting the old fence and that it was "his" so we just put the fence that we wanted up. The other two sides weren't in the best condition (mainly due to the previous occupier of our house being a twit and not maintaining  his garden) and they fell down due to high winds. Both of those neighbours insisted on replacing the fences on the grounds that we "undoubtedly had enough to deal with". The neighbours all knew what a poor state our house was in; the previous occupier was not well thought of and every single person in my road that I've met since we moved in have all used exactly the same rather unpleasant noun for him. We never met the guy so can't really comment other than to say that property/garden maintenance was not something he did. Nor was cleaning for that matter!

stig

This is a common confusion due to mixing up two different concepts.

someone  will be responsible for maintaining the boundary between two properties - that is, ensuring it is kept identifiable, which could be be a line of string between posts. This obligation  will generally be in the deeds.

Someone will be the legal owner of  the boundary features - walls, fences, hedges, whatever. This will usually be the person who paid for them or the person who bought the house from the person who paid for them.

It’s very rare that the responsibility for maintaining a boundary comes with binding conditions for the kind of marker (I.e. fence) that must be used.

Sometimes  these  will be the same people, sometimes not. As mentioned above, who installs the features is generally driven by who wants them the most. I have bouncy dogs, so if my dogless neighbour was happy marking a boundary he’s responsible for with a three foot chain link fence, I might ask him if he minded me replacing it with a six foot wood panel one. If he says yes, we end up with a fence belonging to me on a boundary he has the legal  obligation to maintain. So you can see when we’ve both moved and new neighbours move in, who owns what and who’s responsible for what isn’t  as clear cut as “look at the deeds”. If it isn’t clear who owns the actual boundary marker and both parties want one, it often makes sense to simply split the cost. Otherwise, do you really want your neighbour erecting their own fence six inches inside their boundary which you can’t paint, grow climbers up, or interfere with in any way because you were insistent  it should be  “their” fence😁

youth_leader

Thank you for all your replies.  I've just come back from a dog walk and met my neighbour and asked her about the cost of the repair - seems she has just found out that it is my fence, so I'll need to get it sorted.  She has lived here for two years and only just found out from her neighbours that the fence to the right of her garden is hers.

I've just remembered my seller left me the old paper deeds, I'll have a good look through and see if I can find any mention of the boundary.

davidmcn

youth_leader said:

I've just remembered my seller left me the old paper deeds, I'll have a good look through and see if I can find any mention of the boundary.

What did they tell you in the property information form about the fences?

Neil49

In that case why don't you ask her to share the cost, just as she did to you, and see what response you get. 

youth_leader

Thank you davidmcn, I haven't looked at the property information form for so long I'd forgotten about it.  Answers are clear on there, looking at the front of the house my boundaries are on the right, at the rear, and at the front.  Thank you.  My previous house and garden was huge and remote and I didn't have to consider my boundaries as they were very clear.  I won't ask her to share the cost Neil49, she is a bit confused I think, somehow we talked about pensions and she is wrong about her SPA too.  The bonus is that she likes cats.

sammyjammy

Darn it, I thought this was a post about stolen goods