Air source heat pump against my property.

jaimie_2

Hi. I live in a ground floor ex council house owned outright. Upstairs house is still council owned and they are busy installing air source heating into tenants houses. Our access to our back garden is a shared path from the road and if and when the time comes the pump will be installed next to the external staircase for the upstairs house.  However the unit and pipe work will need to be attached to my house wall. Can I refuse to allow them to do this? Going by other installations in our street it can only be sited in one place and because we have flooding issues it would have to be raised 18” at least off the ground. That puts it exactly in line with the bed headboard on the other side of the wall. I can hear the unit across the road running so imagine one on my bedroom wall would drive me crazy. I live in Scotland btw if that makes a difference to planning requirements. Thank you. 

doodling

Hi,

Your question can only be answered by understanding exactly what you own and exactly what rights your upstairs neighbour has over what you own. You need to dig out your house title and any leasehold, or similar documentation (and possibly that of your neighbour) to find out.

In general, it is common for councils to retain significant rights over the land around housing they sell so you may not have much choice but the only way to be sure is to read your title docs.

If the unit is noisy then you may have additional rights with respect to noise nuisance, either by complaining to your local council team that deals with noise nuisance, or through your own legal action.